As John and I were heading up on a ski lift on Saturday morning we made a spontaneous decision to ski until lunchtime and then, on a whim, head down to Kanazawa, get our scooters, and pick up where we left off on the...
Great Scooter Adventure.
So at about 12 we left seaside, went to our respective apartments, packed and then drove to Kanazawa arriving at 4pm. By 4.30pm we were heading out of Kanazawa on our trusty scooters speeding towards Fukui.
Unfortunately the weather was clouding up and it was getting windy, making it a relatively demanding journey. Wanting to reach Fukui no-matter-what, we pressed on in the dark, which turned out to be extremely difficult. It was cold and the lights from the in-coming cars were pretty dazzling, so much so that it was virtually impossible to see anything through the helmet's visor. We made it and after about three hours since leaving Kanawazawa we were heading into the bright lights of Fukui in time for a yaki-niku supper.
We hadn't planned on sleeping in Fukui, so we headed out and ended up pitching our tent in a park in a town called Sabae. Unfortunately, it was a summer tent, which meant that it was little more than a mosquito net covered with a bit of tarpalin. I froze! By 4am, I could lie there no more freezing to death. So I decided to go and enjoy the night life that Sabae has to offer. Namely, the many conbinis. I thought that killing about 2 and a half hours before the sun came up was going to be difficult, but it proved surprisingly easy due to the existence of a 24 internet cafe called 'Freaks'. I had been told about these sorts of places before, but had never ventured into one. Basically for 500 yen I got a small cubicle with a sofa, a widescreen TV and internet access. I could watch a range of Hollywood blockbusters sitting in comfort. It was perfect.
By about 8am, having had an onsen, we set off for Tsuruga. The weather was awful. It was cold and it was raining and we were driving through one of the most difficult sections of Route 8 that we had yet experienced. You would have thought that early on a Sunday morning there would be no cars on the road, but you would be sadly mistaken.
We were constantly being hounded down by huge lorries. Due to the mountainous terrain we were going through numerous tunnels, and numerous times you would look in your wing-mirror to see the lights of a juggernaut bearing down on you.
Those tunnels are pretty fearsome. Not only do you get strong headwinds, and they are dark, but the noise that an on-coming lorry emits is quite terrifying.
We got to Tsuruga by 10 am and were expecting something quite idillic from the guidebook's description - something about the place being a nice little seaside town. It wasn't. It was, as one would expect from a town that is also a major railway junction, very industrial. It was also a strange place. Whilst eating lunch we noticed at least three different people who seemed a little crackers. One in particular stood out. I shall call him - 'The Toilet Man'.
Crazy scootering story no 1 - '
The Toilet Man cometh':
This guy was like something from a Hitchcock movie. He looked perfectly normal from a distance. He was quite young and was wearing normal clothes. Nothing from his appearance would give any indication of his mental state. However, when he spoke that is when you knew you were dealing with a loon.
He first approached John as he was scanning the supermarket aisles for a bento. After a brief round of questions - where are you from etc, he then cut straight to the chase: '
Let's go to the toilet together'. John, understandably, got out of that situation as fast as possible.
Encounter 2 was very similar to encounter 1, except this time he was dealing with two foreigners and his line of questioning was reduced to the single question: Do you need the toilet?
We told him numerous times that we didn't and tried to shrug him off by generally ignoring him and pretending that we were engrossed in something else.
But Toilet Man knows his prey. He knows that it is just a waiting game, and that sooner or later one of us will crack and have to go to his lair - the toilet.
John was the first to crack, but wisely, rather than using the men's facility opted for the disabled, single occupancy toilet. I was not so wise. Having scoped the area and noticing the absence of Toilet Man I mada a bee-line for the mens and did my business, all the time aware that Toilet Man could be anywhere...
Feeling that I my nightmare was nearing an end and that soon I would be in the safe company of my scooter colleague, I walked over to the wash basin and began washing my hands. An uneasy sensation came over me. The only sound being the running water hitting my hands. I looked up at the mirror -
There was Toilet Man looking back at me with a crazed grin.
I was in his territory.
I leaped in the air and before I knew it was making quick with my legs out of the toilet and back to John. Toilet Man approached once again, and once again proposed that we recline to the nearest toilet facility. We declined and waited until Toilet man was a safe distance away and not looking when we made our escape to another section of the shopping department. But no sooner had we left, that we noticed he was following us. We jumped on the nearest escalator. He was there right behind us. We got off on the second floor. So did he. We pretended to look at the selection of shoes. He made no such pretence.
However, we were in luck. A moment that Toilet Man's gaze lingered on something else about the store, was long enough for us to jump once again back onto the escalator and be whisked to the third floor.
We made haste to the electrical section. We were safe. Or so we thought. We were in unfamiliar territory, in a strange town in a foreign land. Toilet Man knew the terrain. This was his environment, and using whatever stalker intelligence he had developed over the years it wasn't long until he had located us buying a notebook.
Like the Terminator he moved slowly towards us, never picking up his pace. Getting nearer and nearer. In a panic we got back on the escalator and headed up another floor to the car park. We made a dash for a lift, pressing the button frantically. It arrived and we rushed in. Within seconds we were out of the building and heading off to our scooters.
We were lucky. We had escaped the clutches of...
...the Toilet Man!
