2007: A Splash Costcodyssey

I needed to go to Costco.

In fact, I REALLY needed to go to Costco. Not only did I need to stock up on some items not usually available at the local supermarkets (at least not without having to forfeit a vital organ), but Halloween (Samhain, "Harvest Festival", whatever) was coming fast. Kids at Ye Olde Academy were already starting to barge their way into the English department office after school yelling, "Trick or treat!" Trying to deny them was like trying to keep a school of pirahnas off of a wading cow; you could hold a few of them off, but the others would have their mitts in the jelly bean jar in an instant. And that was almost a week before Halloween. It was clear I wouldn't stand an Avon lady's chance in Kandahar of surviving the feeding frenzy on the 31st if I didn't have a decent stock on hand.

As it turned out, my wife had to go with her school's volleyball team to a practice meet for most of the day on Saturday, so that left me and the kids with nothing to do. It was a good chance to get the necessary mission out of the way. As soon as we were all finished eating breakfast and cleaning up, I loaded myself and the kids into my BLUE RAV4 and headed southwest.

The weather forecast had warned that it would be a rainy day, and they were right. There was a bit of rain falling when we headed out, but not bad. Visibility was good, and there was little standing water on the pavement, but I still figured I'd forego my usual fast pace and travel at a nice, easy cruise. By the time we passed the Narita exit on the freeway the rain had increased considerably. When I pulled off at the Makuhari Messe exit it was a raging downpour. It was a good thing that Costco was relatively uncrowded; I was able to park inside the garage instead of up on the roof for the first time ever.

Thanks to the lack of crowds, shopping went quickly and easily. I already had a good idea of what I wanted to get, so I didn't need to muck around much. Inevitably, I saw a lot of items that were too tempting to pass up, so I wound up with a bit more fluff in my cart than I'd planned (Costco's most severe danger). The only disappointment was the Halloween goods. There weren't any. I was told there were lots the week before, but they had already been replaced with Christmas stuff. Oh, well. I was still able to get pumpkins and candy, the main point of the trip in the first place. I finished the shopping, paid (almost a week's salary...AAAAH!!!!) for the lot, and jammed it all into the back of my car by around noon, far sooner than I'd expected. In fact, that gave us a bit more time to play around with, so I suggested to the kids that we have lunch at Subway (warm, cheesy fanfare) ...the first time in ages. Needless to say, they were pretty excited.

The only Subway outlet that I knew within a 20-kilometer radius was the one I sometimes go to over in Sakurai City, but that was a bit out of our way. Figuring there had to be a closer one, I fired up the R2 unit navi system, and it told me there were several within 10 kilometers. I locked onto the closest one, which was only one kilometer away, and drove out of the parking garage...into a screaming cloudburst. Visibility was basically spit (well, rainwater, anyway...) so I just followed the navi system blindly. It led me to the complex of shopping malls in the center of the Makuhari Messe area, so I headed for the parking garage that was nearest the Subway's indicated location. I then spent something like ten or fifteen minutes circling around until I was able to grab a free parking space. Then we got out of the car and quickly found out that:

1. There were no connecting passages between the various shopping malls, and even the bridges linking their upper floors were open to the elements. Needless to say, we got soaked.
2. The Subway had recently gone out of business and had been replaced by a Tully's Coffee.

We were bummed (and wet) but not defeated. We went back to the car and spent almost five minutes threading our way back out of the labyrinthe of that parking garage. Then I asked Sir Navi for the next Subway on the list. It showed there was one a little over three kilometers away, so I headed for it. Of course, "three kilometers" was definitely "as the crow flies", and the maze of twisty, little roads, all alike, that we wound up on ("plugh") made for considerably more travel distance than that. We finally spotted the Subway (yaaaaay!) embedded in the back of a large Jusco shopping center, so I pulled into its parking garage...and spent a good fifteen minutes circling through its labyrinthe of a parking garage until I gave up and parked on the roof. When we left the car and sprinted for the store entrance the rain was coming down in sheets.

I tell you, those Subway sandwiches were wonnnnnnderful...

We ordered one more foot-long sandwich to take home to my wife, and we headed back through the store to get to the car. Of course, the kids spotted a video game arcade along the way, and they just HAD to play one game of "DragonQuest Monster Duel" before we could go. (Otherwise there would have been a disastrous conjunction between critical points of six hundred sixty-six different planes of existence that would have summoned Satan, Sauron, Morgoth, Lord Foul, Arawn, Juiblex, Slaanesh, Gargamel, Nyarlathotep, Mullah Omar, PeeWee Herman, Soft Cell, the Strontium Fuller Brush Man, and maybe something even worse! Perish the thought!) Naturally, there was a whole line of kids backed up behind ONLY ONE MACHINE IN WORKING ORDER. That at least gave me time to look around in the bookstore and musical instrument shop, but by the time we got back to the car it was getting dark.

The journey home was scary. It was one thing to be trapped in traffic in one of the downtown districts of Chiba City during rush hour. It was something else altogether to be driving on the freeway in gale-force crosswinds and rain that might as well have been spray from a fire hose. Anytime a truck or bus came within fifty meters we were caught in a cloud of spray that made visibility more or less zero. All I could do was creep along keeping my eyes fixed on the lights of the car in front of me and hope he was in his lane. It was a damned good thing that we lost almost all of the traffic once we got past the Narita exit. Even then I had to deal with my car bucking like a bronco every time we went across a bridge and got caught in that crosswind. We were thankful to arrive home in one piece, though lugging the goods from the car to the house wasn't fun. A jet-ski probably would have sped things up, but I don't happen to own one.

It wasn't until after we got everything in the house, peeled off our soggy clothes, and turned on the TV that we found a typhoon warning was in effect. I guess that's what I get for not reading my newspaper. Oh, well. Another Saturday, another tale to blog about. Besides, I'm ready for Halloween!