Too Much Water, No Fish

This past weekend the plan was to go to the Churaumi Aquarium on the north part of the island. I recently bought a camera that my parents sent to me (thanks Mom and Dad!), so I was eager to try some of the features that I convinced myself that I needed (it has an aquarium setting, after all).

The trip was doomed before it even began. We had been getting some very heavy rains late last week. When I got to my car in the morning, I found the driver's side to be filled with about three inches of standing water. Nice. When I bought the car, the seller did mention a leak; however, he didn't let on to the magnitude of it. He said that they couldn't ever figure out where it came from. After doing a thorough inspection, I found that the leak was coming from two screw holes at the base of the driver's door frame. Of course, the screws were no where to be seen. I spent about twenty minutes bailing water with the ash tray that I pulled out of the console. All this in a torrential downpour.

After working up my appetite bailing water, I headed to MaxValu supermarket (in Japanese it is pronounced ma-ka-su-va-loo) and got two trays of sashimi and one of sushi. I figured I would just make it a fish themed day, plus I had over 1000 yen in change that I was tired of looking at. Incidentally, spoken language is not necessary when you drop two handfuls of change onto a cashier's counter in a busy supermarket. In that instance, her body language was enough to make me understand that counting 10 yen coins was not a favorite hobby of that particular cashier. Feeling relieved of my burden of coins, I sat in the parking lot eating tray after tray of fish while watching the rain fall and listening to Interpol. Admittedly, it was a fairly depressing sight and it made for some inquisitive looks from the locals. At that point, I was the fish in the aquarium, and the Japanese were me (except they were the ones getting wet, and I was dry; all but me feet, at least).

As I drove to the north side of the island, the rain did not let up. In fact, it started coming down harder. It is amazing how much soil an island can give up and not appear to be any smaller. For miles and miles driving along the coast there were rivers of orange water spewing into the ocean. In some places, the orange water's path to the ocean paid no regard to the roads. After about an hour into the drive I reached my first closed road. The water was about two feet deep on the main road. I followed some locals into cramped alley's and dirt roads passing by dozens of tombs the size of small house and by-passed the closed section. This was not the last time I would do so.

I never made it to my final destination. Too many road closures and heavy rains. After every closure, I would take to the side streets and mountain roads trying to find a way around. There were many dead ends and many U-turns on winding mountain lanes. It was quite comical the way all of us would go about finding roads. I would see the same car three or four times as each of us would try a different route, find it led to a dead end, go back to the main road and try another route. It was a bit like the old movies with a person going into a door only to come out on the opposite side of the hallway two doors down. All in all, I probably had more fun driving through the floods than I would have at the aquarium.

After I finally gave up, I came up with a plan B. I went to see the Bourne Ultimatum for a second time that weekend and went to an all-you-can-eat place with a couple of friends. It was one of those places with a gas flame in the middle of the table. You order raw meat and cook it yourself. My two friends were done after an hour of eating. I was trying to explain to them that if you are going to spend 2000 yen on a meal, it is in no way an "all you want to eat" dining experience. No no. All you can eat means that you may have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone and go ahead and order up some more sirloin and kimchee even though you aren't sure you can finish it. After watching me eat for another hour and a half I think they realized two things: 1. I wasn't joking about the can part, and 2. They don't want to go to an all you can eat place with me ever again.

Pics will be on the way, I just need to figure out how to upload them. My work computer claims that I need to be an administrator to plug my camera into it. So picky.