Girl Bloggers Night Out

Turns out one of the blogs I read regularly (gentle indifference - listed over on the right) is by a girl whol lives right here in Hamamatsu. I only figured this out recently when she mentioned the typhoon bearing down on "our fair city". I got in touch with her and suggested drinks if we both survived the bad weather. She agreed, and tonight was the official get-together. We met at "Groovy Gravy", a vegetarian/gaigin hangout at 9:00. She is into Texas Holdem, is from North Carolina and has lived without internet for 5 months (bless her heart, as we say in the South). I had a lovely time. It was nice talking to someone in complete sentences, at a normal speed, using slang, idioms and tons of sarcasm. We were still there at 2:00 am when I realized the train had quit running at 11:30 pm. We decided I needed to take a taxi home. Problem was I didn't know how much it would cost and I hadn't really brought a whole lot of money. She forced a few extra yen on me, and I could pay up her bar tab next time. I wandered down "Happy Street" (I think it has another name but all us dopey foreigners call it this) and chose one of the billion cabs waiting for drunks. Happy to say I am not really in that category. I might fit in the tipsy category, especially if you notice any misspelled words. The cabbie couldn't understand me, but laughed and kept trying. Eventually he figured out where I needed to go and headed straight there. Turns out I had just enough for cab fair without Andrea's money, but this gives us an exuse to get together again. I think next time a deck of cards will be involved.