My Woman Rocks

Due to a blanket thrown over the media, my birthday last week went mostly unnoticed by the general public. Despite threatening to forget it, Mari was one who eventually did remember it.

She said she wanted to take me out to dinner on Thursday night, and so we ventured into Ginza. Ginza is the swankiest area of Tokyo - even a cup of Doutour coffee (the salaryman's Starbuck's) costs twice as much there for some reason. Maybe it's because it is replete with the headquarters of brand names. It's also got a very nice Italian restaurant that we tried out.

However we didn't try it out alone. She'd secretly invited a few old friends to celebrate. It was a very nice surprise as these friends (except Allan) I hadn't seen for periods ranging from 3 months to about a year. Time goes by so fast and it is easy to lose contact with people. Not only did I get to eat some of the nicest pizza I've ever eaten, I got to make off with a little booty too in the form of some presents. It was such a good time I'm thinking of having another birthday next week at the same place.

But it didn't stop there. Mari said that my present would arrive on the weekend. I thought that she meant that a courier service might be delivering something. Maybe it was some more food?

I was rudely awoken at 4:30 on Saturday morning by the alarm which Mari had set. I apparently mumbled something crazy before I realized that she was telling me I had to get up and get dressed. I also had to pack a change of clothes as we were going away for the night. Where were we going? Well we had tickets on the first flight out of Haneda airport bound for Kumamoto. Kumamoto is on the island of Kyushu, in western Japan.

It has long been a dream of mine to visit Kumamoto. One of our close friends, Chika, hails from there. Also one of my favorite ramens comes from Kumamoto. I have long wanted to try it in the town of its origin. It is basically pig fat soup, with two big pieces of pig fat pork. Drowning in this is some garnish of shredded cabbage, half a boiled egg, and some green things (either mutant beans of mutant seaweed). Were it sold overseas I'm pretty sure it would have a warning from the Surgeon General plastered on the side.

The Saturday was spent driving around to a few places. It was however cold - very, very cold. We would venture from the warmth of rent-a-car's air-conditioning for a few seconds before racing back. We saw a crater that still has a worrying amount of gas coming from it, went to an onsen, ate the greatest soba set for lunch, and took an excursion to adventure courtesy of the car's GPS system.

I'm losing faith in this modern technological wonder, the GPS. If you're familiar with the story of my move to Tama Plaza you'll know that the GPS enlisted there failed to perform. In this instance it performed, I'm just not sure what it was performing on. It constantly wanted us to deviate from the highway to take courses up into the mountains. Maybe the mountain routes it was suggesting were shorter in distance than taking the highway. Much like as in a Western you can "head them off at the pass". Or perhaps it was programmed by mountain men to lure hapless travelers to their squeal-like-a-pig festivals.

The first time we foolishly followed the GPS’ advice we found ourselves driving down a mountain road increasingly being covered in snow that was so narrow that even a 15-point turn put one in fear of plummeting. After not plummeting and then returning to the highway we reached our destination in under 5 minutes. I don't know how much time the GPS thought it was saving us. The second time left us again in the mountains, this time facing a road closed sign and a ten minute return drive to the highway. At least I enjoyed the adventure and got to see some of the pristine nature in the mountains of Kyushu.

The other oddity of the GPS was that it offered E.S.Ts based on the occult. In one instance we had a seventy-five kilometer drive before us. Previously we had been achieving an average speed of around 60kph. It gave an estimated travel time of over 2 hours. I sneered at its stupidity. Eerily though it turned out to be right. Due to an accident the traffic was for a time reduced to a crawl, and we ended up arriving just shy of its estimation. I sense a supernatural hand at work. Or maybe the mountain men, alerted by the GPS, came down from the mountain and caused the accident to trap us. Could we nearly have been victims of The Cars that Ate Kumamoto?

The Sunday was spent in Kumamoto, mostly at Kumamoto castle and the surrounding area. Kumamoto castle ties with Shuri castle as the best I've seen in Japan. Its grounds are huge and beautifully maintained. Also the castle itself it well presented, although it should be for most of it was rebuilt in the 1960s after it had been burned to the ground in an abortive civil war a little over a hundred years ago. It is thought of as one of the best 3 castles in Japan. If there is ever an agreement between myself and Blogger about pictures, I'll post them up.

After the castle came a museum, the ramen, a trip to a garden, coffee, and a return to the airport to catch our flight home. It was then that we were informed that the flight was cancelled. They were having a problem with the plane that just couldn't be fixed (I assumed they meant “at the moment” and not “ever”). As it was a technical problem I'm not too sorry that they cancelled the flight. It was pretty funny though, as this company had also canceled the flight to Kumamoto as well. They had done this on the Friday, and contacted Mari with a ticket on an alternate carrier to cover her booking. This first cancellation all happened behind the scenes to me. This late on Sunday night though there was no alternative carrier. As soon as the information came on Mari jumped straight up and grabbed the closest guy in a suit who worked for the airline to sort out the problem. In five minutes we were in a taxi to (coincidently) the same hotel that we had not long ago checked out of, all at the airline's expense. We returned to Tokyo on the first flight (with an alternate carrier) on Monday morning. So we ended up making neither flight with the booked airline. Unfortunately for me I had only morning classes on Monday, and so I was left with a day off. Boohoo, another long weekend.

And so for the reasons listed above, and countless others unlisted, my woman rocks.