A Running Adventure!

You may recall from earlier blogs that running is part of my daily routine. I run pretty much everyday or close to it. Bill (one of the Aussie teachers) is my running partner and takes me on all sorts of running tracks. His runs are never easy and I always seem to struggle to keep up, but I battle on. We never do the same run twice which is good because it makes it interesting and you get to see some cool places in Himeji. Well this particular run was VERY interesting and quite amusing. Steve (an American in our building) also joins us most nights and happened to be running with us on this occasion.
We started off on a normal run until Bill decided to wind us through the streets in all sorts of directions to add on some time to our run. Anyway, we somehow managed to end up in the bus depot. Who knows how we ended up there but we did. Bill ran through expecting to come to an exit on the other side but had no such luck. Steve and I were just following along like good followers. We asked Bill where he was going, but he just kept running. Meanwhile the Japanese bus drivers were looking at us strangely wondering what we were doing and why we were in their bus depot. They then shouted out something in Japanese to us through a megaphone. Of course we couldn’t understand what they were saying but I pretty much got the gist that we weren’t meant to be in there. Meanwhile we were running a lap of the bus depot. As we came around the corner to run back out some more drivers came out of a room and started crossing their arms in an ‘x’ sign yelling ‘dame, dame’, which means ‘bad, no, not allowed’. We soon got the message that we were not allowed to be in their and apologised and told them that we were lost in English. They were just laughing at us as we ran passed. It would have been such a funny sight seeing these three foreign people running through their bus depot. We couldn’t stop laughing when we got out and I am sure the bus drivers would have been talking and laughing about it too. There is never a dull moment when you are running with Bill that’s for sure!!