in which our hero overcomes his fears and asks a question he himself doesn't understand

being shy by nature, I am usually content to fumble through foreign countries speaking as little as possible in the language of the country. That's not to say I don't want to; in fact, one of my biggest regrets is that, other than a smattering of French, I have no foreign languages that I feel comfortable with. I plan to fix that in the future, but that's another story. Anyways, earlier I was waiting at a bus stop for company buses. Basically, it's a central place where people can meet a company bus that will take them en masse to their place of work. Quite an ingenious little situation. So I'm waiting for my company bus, but the buses aren't labeled particularly well and I'm not sure which one is correct. Not wanting to have the bus drive off while I'm puzzling over the options, I pull out the trusty Japanese Phrase Book and practice my little question, "Which bus goes to ?"

I muster my courage, walk up to one of the bus drivers and say, "Dono bass ga ..." and I begin to trail off, partly because I couldn't remember the rest of the phrase, and partly because he already got the gist of what I was asking. Through a bit of hand waving, he let me know that the bus wasn't here yet, but it was blue on top. Right on. It showed up two minutes later, and I got on, giving my ad-hoc tour guide a wave as I did so.