At any rate, I took a shower on my heavily sweating body, stretched my stick-like legs on the bed, and finally got some rest. I spent some time in bed in a daze, and also had a long phone call with an acquaintance who is stationed in the Netherlands.
The next thing I knew, it was past nine o’clock. However, I was so tired and excited that I hardly had any appetite, and I was stunned, but I could not go on like this without eating anything. However, I was in no mood to find a suitable restaurant and have a leisurely meal. First of all, I had no idea what kind of restaurants were in the area where I had just arrived at my room for the first time. I thought it would be safer to shop at a supermarket for tomorrow’s breakfast. I searched for supermarkets in the area on the Internet and found one about a 15-minute walk away. However, if I went out, it was doubtful whether I could get into the room again because I did not open the door by myself. I was very lost, but I couldn’t just sit there. I left the room and walked to the supermarket with the help of Google Maps.
By the way, although we are not usually aware of it, northern Europe is surprisingly high in latitude. This is why the days are extremely long in summer, and it is still light outside even after nightfall.
It was almost 10 p.m. when I left my room, but it was still this bright. My hotel was on the north bank of the Seine, the same bank as the Louvre, and the supermarket I was going to was on the south bank, passing a sandbar called the Ile de la Cité on the way, and crossing two bridges connecting the sandbar and both banks.
We managed to make it to the supermarket, finished our shopping, and left the supermarket. Google Maps, which had been entrusted with providing us with directions, suddenly gave us an error message saying that it was unable to guide us because it was not connected to the Internet, and the directions stopped. I tried everything in a hurry, but it just wouldn’t recover. I kept walking, thinking that I could make it because I was just going back the way I came, but finally I was lost in Paris at night.
Fortunately, I had written down the address of the hotel on my phone, and I remembered that there was a large tower and a square with a statue nearby, so I was able to get to the hotel.
It was late at night and the number of pedestrians was decreasing. I finally arrived at the hotel with the help of three policemen who were just passing by on patrol. I am not even sure how I opened the front door of the building. However, I do remember that it had once opened unexpectedly at some point, so that may have been the case at that time. Later, after several attempts, I found out that one of the causes was the extraordinary weight of this door and the extremely short security release time. If the weight of opening a door of a Japanese building is that of a light car, the weight of the door of this Parisian building is as heavy as an armored car for the president of the United States. Moreover, the doors only open immediately after the security button is pressed. So, as soon as you press the security button, you have to put all your weight on the heavy front door to open it.
At any rate, I was finally able to return to my room after being out for several hours at night again. The question is why the Internet connection was suddenly cut off and whether we will be able to get an Internet connection from now on.
I had signed up for a mobile Wi-Fi service that connects to the local telecommunications network in each country, and I had brought my own Wi-Fi device with me. I was basically focusing on this Internet connection, but then I noticed that the charging of this Wi-Fi device was not working properly. The charging cable had become loose and was making poor contact.
I had brought a spare cable with me, but it was in my second bag, which I had lost in Brussels, and the Wi-Fi device was unusable.
Normally, you can use the Wi-Fi provided by the hotel in your hotel room. However, I tried this hotel’s Wi-Fi as well when I entered the room, but it did not work. At that time, I thought lightly that I had two other options, and did not immediately contact the hotel’s reservation site. When I went out to the supermarket that night, I used Softbank’s “Unlimited International Pake-Unlimited” service, which I use regularly in Japan. This last resort, so to speak, was suddenly and without warning cut off. We all realize that the use of the Internet has become extremely widespread in all aspects of modern life, but especially when living overseas, Internet access is almost a matter of life and death. Inability to search for information is a fatal problem, but nowadays it is practically impossible to make hotel reservations or obtain local bullet train or airplane tickets except through the Internet. Especially when you are traveling alone abroad, suddenly losing Internet access is just like having your oxygen supply cut off while diving.
The reason why Softbank’s overseas service suddenly stopped working became clear soon afterwards. I went back to my hotel room and was trying to figure out the reason for the disconnection when I received this short message from SoftBank.
This communication fee was actually incurred under the circumstances I wrote about in my previous article, “From Departure to Arrival in The Hague”. However, after returning to Japan, during several lengthy phone calls with SoftBank, SoftBank admitted that the charges had been incurred due to an unexpected mistake in in-flight communications, and most of the charges were canceled. However, in addition to this, when I contacted the support center after my return to Japan, I made a serious complaint about how this sudden suspension of communication could cause a critical situation for users, and they responded that they would do their best to deal with the situation in the future.
In any case, the biggest problem I was facing at that time was that I had to contact them from “other phones” in order to cancel the outage. Unfortunately, in addition to my main iPhone 13, I had also brought my other iPhone 7, which I had lost at the train station in Brussels, along with my second bag. Therefore, I had no way to contact the company to cancel the communication suspension. In the midst of this physically and mentally exhausting situation, I thought about the blockage and even felt a sense of despair: “I’ve worked so hard for so long in my life, but I’ve finally come to a dead end in this foreign land.
That night in Paris, I suddenly became an Internet refugee. However, my body and mind were exhausted after a day of intense activity, and I fell asleep that night.
