Saturday, September 01, 2007

- 怪奇現象 -

currently listening to - call me when you're sober
mood - top of the world

...... MERDEKA!!!!! (too late)

*****

let me tell you about my little adventure at nagano.

...

yes i went to nagano.

for some personal business. *ヲヲヲ・・*

on the day of departure to nagano, i woke up, only to find that it's 3pm. i.e. it's freakking late already. the plan was to arrive at Ichinose (some very ulu place in nagano) before 8pm. wooohooo.

by the time i reached ikebukuro, it was 4pm? i dunno.. from there, took a train to Oomiya (some Saitama place?!?!), where i'm supposed to take off to nagano by shinkansen.

the thing is, no bus or train get you directly to Ichinose. the most economical (and fastest) way to get there was to take the shinkansen to Nagano station, and from there, go to Yudanaka station by the local nagano-line (which takes an hour or so), and then, ze Ichinose bus (which is supposed to take another... half an hour?). which means, i might reach my destination right on time.

that is, if the plan above had worked.

but apparently it didn't.

arrived at Yudanaka at 7.30pm. and i was told that there's NO MORE BUS for Ichinose. banzaaaaaaaai... yes, the mighty shiroyuu miscalculated again. there were buses when i arrived. but they're for completely different places. you know, the red bus and the green bus and the yellow bus? which take different routes?

anyways.. tried to call up the person whom im supposed to meet. but nobody answered the phone. so it was time for plan B ---- TAXI!!!!!! and guess what, to get to Ichinose it cost 7,000 yen. yes. and i thought i was considerably rich that day, coz i had 5,000 in my wallet even after buying the shinkansen ticket.

and for the first time, Lawson had an image-down. maybe all this while i've been withdrawing cash from Family Mart, and i was shocked (even though i still looked like the usual piece of dead meat...) to find there's no ATM in that Lawson chain store.......

that was my second *thrilling* financial crisis in life. the first one being the akihabara incident.. when some certain person was out of cash and couldn't afford a Tsukuba Express ticket back home, and i, being a good samaritan (err..), ran around akihabara & okachimachi in search of a working ATM in the rain (while my friend trapped herself in the restaurant *grinnnn*). it was the last day of Golden Week by the way..... so back to the story.......

i really felt like spending a night in a nearby onsen hotel. coz that would probably cost less than 5k per night. for your information, there wasn't a single k-box. nor a 24-hour restaurant, of course. but i thought i'd better find an ATM, in other words, another convenience store.. the Lawson cashier was very cooperative, they described the way to a nearby 7-11, telling me that it's "a little far from here".

and "a little far" turned out to be "nowhere near". partly because im a directionless idiot. walk down the main road, walk down the slope, turn left, then turn right.. then walk again..... and the first building to your right will be 7-11. and i ended up in front of a Sunakku Mitsuko (small izakaya? .. take Sunakku Otose in Gintama).........

after wandering in this silent deserted area for about half an hour, i came to a pharmacy (a.k.a drug store in japan).. decided to ask for directions back to the station, when 2 ladies (one of the being the cashier lady) came rushing out of the store. and they were like.. pointing at the sky, saying, "hey do you see it?! the kaiki gesshoku!!" at first i misheard it as kaiki genshou, which means "unnatural phenomenon"......

gave me the creeps when i looked up in the sky and saw the moon disappeared right in front of my eyes. moments later, on the very spot where the moon vanished, a glowing blood-red ring loomed. then we realised that the sound of the cicadas stopped.

right, this is no thriller movie. i just happened to witness a rare natural occurrence with the name, total lunar eclipse.

it seems that im weak against full moon and eclipse. had a nightmare about the red ring that night.. hmm maybe in my past life i was a werewolf or something. >:D

after the eclipse i wandered for another half an hour before my friend's friend came to fetch me with his parents' 4WD. and i finally understood why does it cost 7,000 to get there from Yudanaka... the racing track in initial D the movie is no match for the road to Ichinose. it was nothing more than a colony of sharp curves and long winding roads and lush forests, but after 30 minutes of those you'll begin to worry that you might never get out of the maze.

it was 9pm when we touched the goal.

*****

1) kaiki gesshoku - 皆既月食 total lunar eclipse. it's been 6 years since the last eclipse which could be seen from all parts of japan.
2) kaiki genshou - 怪奇現象