By Lauren Hudgins

Bringing my Doc Martens was the worst decision I made while packing for Japan.

In Japan it’s customary to take off your shoes when you enter somebody’s home, along with some other indoor spaces. I went to see a dermatologist and was required to remove my boots as I went into the building. The first thing I saw when I entered my new, tiny metal box of an apartment was a red paper sign on the floor, near the door, that said “SHOES OFF!” It was demanded of me that I remove my shoes in my own home. Boots above the ankle (boots like my black pleather Doc Martens with eight lace holes) are extremely impractical if you’re planning to go indoors more than once a day. All that shimmying on, and lacing, and unlacing, and shimmying off gets pretty tedious.

If my looks didn’t give it away, this little dance of social inelegance marked me as a total gaijin, immediately calling focused attention to all of my strangeness and cultural ineptitude. The word gaijin is a slang shortening of the word “gaijkokoujin” or “outside country person.” It is somewhat derogatory and translates most simply to just plain “outsider.” The best cultural translation might be “barbarian with unwise footwear.”

I lived in a place called Komagata, which translates to something like “Pony Land,” or so I’ve been told. It’s an odd combination of a residential and industrial village set amongst rice fields about an hour’s bike ride away from downtown Maebashi (in Gunma Prefecture). The average height of a Japanese woman was 153cm. The average height of a man was 167cm. I’m 177cm. I didn’t fit any of the bikes in all of Maebashi. The Japanese woman assigned by my company to help me get settled let me borrow one of her old bikes for free while I looked for one that fit me well enough to justify spending the money.

Like almost all the bikes in Japan, it was a cruiser with no gears. They call them “city bikes” or “mamacharis.” This one was also a bit rusted because it was old, not well cared for and a bit cheap to begin with. The brakes didn’t work that well, but this didn’t really matter. There was no way to make that rickety bike go fast enough to cause much damage in an accident. Even though it was one of the larger sizes of bikes in Japan, it was considerably too small for me. I could jack the seat up as much as I liked, but there was no way to make the bike any longer. The handlebars crashed into my knees every time I tried to turn. Riding down the streets of Pony Land with my blond hair, my silly, white face, and my ridiculously tall body on this little cruiser, I could almost hear circus music playing. I felt like a trained monkey. A sideshow spectacle. Step right up! See the gaijin ride a bike!

One Friday in April, while the Gunma Wind was blowing, I wanted bread and was pedaling around trying to remember where a certain bakery was located. The wind was so strong it blew me off course and nearly pushed me into the busy road. If I came to a stop, I had to place my foot down very firmly to keep from falling over. Sometimes I would be pedaling furiously against the crosswind, leaning one direction to compensate for the push, and then suddenly the wind would let up and I’d go flying in the opposite direction. See the gaijin careen around like a shanghaied sailor!

I had given up looking for the bakery with the great croquettes and was heading back toward a different bakery when I suddenly couldn’t pedal anymore. I looked down and realized that one of the loops of my Doc Marten bootlaces had gotten caught and pulled taut from one end of the pedal shaft to the other. I stopped and tugged at it.

I always double-knotted my bootlaces because they were very long, and I didn’t want them to become untied every time they snagged on something. Smart, lucky girl I was! The lace loop was stretched to the point that the double-knot was too tight to untie. The lace might have somehow managed to wriggle itself into this awkward position, but it certainly wasn’t going to become untangled in the same way. I didn’t have a knife, or scissors, or anything.

The wind was still gusting mightily. I swung my leg over the bike so that I had both legs on one side and was more stable, but this just managed to twist the bootlace even tighter. So there I was, this dumb blonde gaijin on the side of the road with her foot tied to a bike. I only had one leg to stand on and the wind was going to tip me over at any moment. I saw a 7-Eleven about a block and a half away, which I assumed would have a knife, or scissors, or a box cutter, or something that would cut a shoelace. So inch-by-inch I stumbled, dragging the sidelong bike to the convenience store. The manner of movement was: Shift my stuck left leg to the right in order to backpedal a bit, push the bike forward and bring my left leg down… hop on the right foot! Shift my leg to the right, bring the bike forward, hop! And so on. Everyone was staring at me from passing cars, but no one was stopping to help. See the gaijin do a funny jig down the street!

I only knew a few phrases in Japanese and all of them came from watching anime as a teenager. My favorite was tuskete, which means, “help me!” I enjoyed the way it sounded dramatic and pathetic at the same time, especially when wailed by a nubile damsel in distress in a high-pitched Japanese voice. I’d always wanted to say it, but how foolish is that? Actually desiring an occasion when one would need to say, “Help me!”

A mother and child watched me from inside a black SUV. When I got to the parking lot of the convenience store, the son finally opened the door and asked me something in Japanese. And there, I finally got to say it. “Tuskete!” I pled. The mother and son hurried out of the car with electronic dictionary in hand. We never needed it. I’m sure it must have looked as if I were horribly injured—limping along, leaning against my bike for support. The woman pulled up my pant leg a little to see what was going on. I immediately wished I had gone ahead and shaved my legs that morning instead of being lazy, lest she think all gaijin were hairy. As soon as she understood what had happened she started laughing and tried to twist my leg into all sorts of impossible positions in order to loosen up the shoelace. Finally, and thankfully, she gave up and made a cutting motion. I nodded. “Chotto matte,” she said, or, “Wait a moment.” And then she went into the store. A clerk came out with scissors. “Dijobu?” she asked, which is a confusing statement that seems to mean “Are you OK?” or “I’m OK,” or in this case: “Is it OK?” I grinned and nodded. After all, it wasn’t as if they were amputating my foot. What’s a shoelace? The other alternative was that I went around the rest of my life with this bike stuck to my leg.

When I did get a bike, it was a mountain bike in my size, which moved faster than the mamacharis. I would never succeed at speaking more than basic Japanese or master other fine arts, such as cycling while holding an umbrella, but I got around.

Lauren Hudgins earned her MA in Publishing and her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Portland State University in 2014. She bikes about the gloom of the rainy Pacific Northwest to keep her endorphins flowing and works as a freelance digital strategist. Find her on Twitter: @lehudgins and visit her website https://laurenhudgins.com.