Bike Key Drama

I seem to be having a run of bad luck recently, first the coin locker incident, then I lost my Nintendo DS case containing two games followed by managing to smash my wife's favourite mug (not a cheap mug either) and many other smaller incidents. This run of bad luck culminated in an incident involving my bikes wheel lock on Saturday, we had been on a manic bike ride through the busy traffic into town when we stopped to browse a nearby shop. When I parked up, I reached down to remove the key (in order to lock the wheel) to find it had vanished! What was odd was that you cannot remove the key unless you lock the wheel which should have made it impossible for the key to fall out while riding.

Luckily, we kept a spare back at the flat but I still felt rather annoyed by the whole thing. It was at this point that I remembered that I had been carrying my so called 'lucky' charm in my pocket throughout these recent incidents. It was pretty clear in my mind that I would have to dispose of the charm as soon as possible but felt that it needed doing in the correct manner so we checked the map for the nearest shrine, which was just a few streets away, and headed off there on foot.

When we reached the shrine I immediately felt much calmer, I'm not a particularly spiritual person but I do find these places calming, I guess if anything its a welcome retreat from the hectic streets of the city. On entering the grounds we were confronted by a huge stage built in the shape of a giant dragons head, quite something for such a small shrine! After staring at the dragons head for a while we found a nearby monk and passed the offending charm other to him for disposal, which he did gladly, then went over to see the main shrine itself.

 You go first......

By the shrine there was a box selling wooden Daruma monks for 300 yen each, at this point I had cheered up considerably so decided to purchase one, spending considerable time choosing the best one. Each monk comes with a slip of paper containing your fortune, I was eager to find out if my luck would change and asked my wife to translate. Luckily, it was a relatively good fortune and said that I had been having bad luck of late (tell me something I don't know!) but just needed to persevere and soon my wishes would come true! It also said that I would find the things that I had lost in a place that was low down and hard to reach.

 My very own monk.

Well, the next day I found my key! Well, half of it anyway, seems it hadn't fell out but snapped in half when riding. Hopefully that was a sign that my little monk was right and my luck will change, I can only hope! (still haven't found that damn DS case though, now where could it be?......)