Adventure in Japan #212

Sometimes when you leave the house in Japan, you end up in places you hadn't planned on. Take, for instance, a few mornings ago when Liz, Barb, and I decided to go to a Japanese cooking class we saw advertised in a magazine for foreigners. When we arrived the train station, we were suppose to take a bus to a community center. Because there was too much confusion on which bus to take, we decided to take a taxi straight to the community center. The first taxi man told us he didn't know where it was. The second taxi man told us he didn't know where it was, but he would drop us off where the bus would have dropped us off. We take the second taxi and get dropped off in some random neighborhood. We roam around a bit to see if we can find the community center, and we decide to ask the police station for directions. The police man didn't know either, but he was a kind man and spent some substantial time making calls to find out where the community center was. He found it and called the community center to tell them there were foreigners who wanted to go to the cooking class. By this time, we are already 30 minutes late, but the community center said they would come get us at the police station. A few minutes, a Japanese lady in a dress comes running towards the police station. She's from the community center, and she informs us there is no cooking class that day! But there's an origami class. So, it was another random adventure in Japan. Koban means the neighborhood police station. The kanji on the police car means Osaka. The nice police man who found the community center. Making origami! And our random origami class. We made origami for Children's Day. There is a boy fish and a girl fish and the fish are hanging off a sunflower stem and at the bottom are little lilies. My fish were a little frumpy and looked more like whales. Yay, origami!