Ki o tsukete!

Maybe no one will find this amusing, but I had a good "look at the weird/dumb foreigner" moment tonight and thought I'd share it since the blog has been lacking in Japanese experiences lately.

Tonight I was riding the bus home from the station. I got on the bus early and waited. There was one other man on the bus, a "salary-man" (or businessman) who looked purely exhausted and was drifting quickly into sleep. My heart went out to the guy since I knew he'd probably been working since 8 this morning (and this was 9:15 at night).

As we were approaching my stop, I reached up and pushed the buzzer to alert the driver. As I did, my drink fell to the floor with a crash and rolled to the feet of sleeping man. I felt bad as I thought that I'd probably startled everyone, especially the businessman. Since we were stopped at a light, I got up to retrieve my drink. Just as I bent over, the completely predictable happened: the bus driver chose that moment to let off the brake and inch up on the light. In a gloriously ungraceful moment I found myself splayed out on the bus floor on top of sleeping man's feet. And I fell out of my shoes. And I hit my chin on something.

So I tried to gather myself, but by this point the bus was moving again so it was difficult. At some point in my struggles the bus driver realized something was going on and called back something, to which I replied "Daijobou desu!" (It's okay!). I sat with my face in my hands until my stop and then ran off the bus. As I was exiting, however, the bus driver called, "Ki o tsukete!" (Be careful!) :) I have a feeling he was not concerned about bad men hiding in the shadows, but instead about me tripping over my own feet as I walked home.

Yeah, it was embarrassing, but I laughed the whole way home. It'd been a while since something dumb and funny had happened to me, so it was somewhat refreshing to just laugh at myself for a while. Hope someone else got a chuckle out of it.

By the way, my chin feels fine now. :)