When you have 10 high schoolers on a trip abroad, things can get weird. Clicks form, arguments occur, and silly childish bets occur. While we were still in Tokyo, one of our chaperones bet us that no one would stick our head in the hotel’s massive lake, filled with Koi fish. The idea was that once you put your hair in, you’d need to flip it back “baywatch style” and stroll back into the hotel like nothing happened. Â Like all bets, it involved money and for high schoolers who had already blew a lot of money shopping Tokyo, earning extra money was an exciting enticement.
The Koi from the lake.
The problem was, the hotel staff were so friendly and inadvertently monitored people as they wandered the grounds. So no one could figure out how they could get close enough to the Koi pond, get their head wet, and back in without attracting a ton of attention. But then, it started to rain. So about half of our group ran to the elevator, and down to the lobby while our Chaperone watched us from his window. We slowed down as a helpful hotel attendant offered us an umbrella. We just waved the bewildered man off, and headed out into the storm.
The first girl didn’t really stick her head in, only getting the tips of her hair wet. She then ran quickly back into the hotel. The next guy went, stuck his head in and screamed, the koi fish were sucking at his head like there was food. He then ran back inside. It was my turn next. I stuck my whole head in, up to my eyes. The koi sucked at my hair and it felt so strange. I then whipped my head up, Baywatch style, and slowly made my way back to the hotel, not bothering to see what the next guy did.
I arrived upstairs to find a fight in process. Turns out the chaperone was pulling our leg and didn’t think we’d actually do it, and so wouldn’t pay any one of us. The first girl had grabbed the train tickets, and hidden them from the chaperone in an effort to blackmail some money. A lot of yelling and negotiating later, the chaperone got the tickets back, and had grounded the girl to her room. Not that it mattered, it was now night and the storm still going.
I still had fun doing it, I wasn’t a wild child and never had done anything like that before so I felt like a rebel at the time. Adult me can laugh but also cringe that we made fools of ourselves in front of the kind hotel staff.
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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