The night I became an Internet refugee in Paris, I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, from the fiasco of moving from Brussels to Paris, and the next morning I woke up at an unusually late hour for me these days. I looked out the window of my hotel room toward the courtyard and saw that it was raining, which was also unusual for me. Come to think of it, this was the only day during our 20-day tour since our first arrival in The Hague, the Netherlands, that anything resembling rain fell. During the rainy season and early summer in Europe, the days were cool and dry, which is unimaginable in hot, humid, and gloomy Japan.
So, I thought it might be a good idea to spend the day in my room, which was under light rain, as I was cut off from the outside world due to the Internet trouble the day before. However, that would not be a step forward in resolving this obstructive and deadlocked Internet trouble.
However, considering that it was the day after we had walked more than 20,000 steps and that we were marching in a light rain, it might be reckless, and the psychological damage would be too great. With this in mind, I decided to abandon my previous “walk, walk, walk” strategy and checked out the subway system, and found that it was close to the Arc de Triomphe station, only two stops away.
I took a leap of faith and headed for the nearby metro station in the light rain. It was my first time to take the subway in Paris, but I managed to arrive at the Charles de Gaulle-Etoile station near the Arc de Triomphe without getting lost. The moment I stepped out of the metro station and onto the ground, I saw the Arc de Triomphe for the first time. Contrary to the “Piss Piss” statue in Brussels, which was much smaller than I had expected and I was a bit disappointed, the Arc de Triomphe was so huge that I was surprised by its imposing majesty. I forgot for a moment the troubles I was having at the time and approached the statue as if I were being drawn closer to it. The light rain that had been falling when I left the hotel had almost stopped, and I found myself holding up my phone and taking pictures under a cloudy sky.
In reality, however, this was not the time to be taking such casual sightseeing photos. I suddenly came to my senses and started walking along the road after the rain, again in the direction of the Japanese Embassy.
At that moment, I saw a pair of young men walking toward me from the other side. I had heard from a foreigner that Japanese people are recognizable by their atmosphere, even if they have the same oriental facial features. I intuitively felt this way and involuntarily asked them, “Excuse me, but are you from Japan?” I asked them. It was the first time I had encountered Japanese people other than my acquaintances stationed in The Hague, and the first time I had spoken Japanese to them.
I was told that they were international students studying at a university in Paris. I told them of my plight regarding the Internet disconnection and asked if I could borrow their phones so that I could contact the Softbank call center using “another phone”. Two calm and kind-looking people immediately responded that they would be happy to help me. I asked Softbank’s call center to lift the disconnection with a stern complaint. And of course, immediately after that, my phone’s Internet connection was restored and I was able to escape from being an Internet refugee in a foreign land.
Later, I heard that the two of them also had some problems and went out to the Japanese Embassy, but they were on their way back after pulling out because so many people were crowding the place in the current complicated situation and the waiting time to respond was too long. If I had not met these young men and had gone straight to the Japanese Embassy, I am not sure if the problem of the Internet disconnection would have been solved immediately, and my encounter with these two Japanese young men might have been a miraculous chance for me to solve my problem.
Here is a line exchange I had with “Inazu” at that time.
Anyway, this morning’s miraculous encounter brought me back from being an Internet refugee in a foreign land and allowed me to once again become one of the few Japanese tourists in Paris.
