RANSVESTIA

little old lady school teacher type. My former roommate and I had managed to get separate accommodations starting with our first night in the Hilton and that was a big relief. We weren't speaking to each other either which became almost funny at times.

After about five days touring Hokkaido, visiting an Ainu village and generally enjoying the countryside we flew back to Tokyo and the Hilton again. We had one day in Tokyo before the group went home and I had a chance to act as guide for a couple of the other wo- men to go downtown on the subway. (I'm a specialist in foreign sub- ways by this time). We went down to see the beautiful shops in the Imperial Hotel and to walk along the Ginza - the main shopping quarter of the city. Coming back on the subway, even transferring was accomplished alright and I got off at the station I got on at in the first place, but like subways in New York and London there was more than one street entrance which we didn't know and so we exited from the station in an entirely strange neighborhood and couldn't even see the Hilton anywhere. Having a fairly good sense of direction I walked further west and we finally found some guards at some public building and though we couldn't understand each other, "Hilton" was a manic word and they pointed out the way.

The rest of the tour went home the next day at noon so I said good- bye to all of them at the bus door in the Hilton driveway. We had been together for 60 days and been through some strange and inter- esting experiences so it was a touching farewell to some of them and good riddance to several others. You can really find out about people when you are with them breakfast, lunch and dinner, buses, airplanes and hotels for 60 days and I take a bit of justified pride in the fact that through thick and thin, good situations and bad, I was just another woman to all of them a bit strange and unusual perhaps,

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but without question one of the women.

Armed with a map I took the rest of the afternoon trying to get to and see the science museum which is in the Imperial Palace grounds. I got to the right subway station alright but when I got to the surface I walked quite a long way in the wrong direction because someone I asked pointed the wrong way. When it became obvious to me that I wasn't getting to the museum I tried asking all sorts of people showing them the map, etc., with no understanding at all. I even asked about a half dozen taxi drivers before I found one who took the map and studied it seriously after I pointed out where I wanted to be and he finally smiled, nodded and proceeded to make a couple of

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