Japan Chronicles

[Ed.'s note: any "misspelling" of words in this entirely tongue and cheek posting are deliberately so. Don't be so literal. Look them up at dictionary.com if you need to figure out the joke behind the "misspelling".]

PART VI

. . . a long, long time ago on an island far, far away our heroine, after being held hostage on an Empirical flying ship for nearly 24 hours, finds herself in . . .



a Ponto Cho restaurant, secretly surveiled by Empirical spies cleverly disguised as gravid tanuki while she is introduced to the pleasures of okonomiyaki. Lest the reader think that is a dirty word, okonomiyaki means, basically "whatever you like, fried". It's a lot of shredded cabbage, some veggies, whatever meat you want, some batter and an egg (fresh). It's brought to your table which is ingeniously set up as a griddle as well, you mix it up in the bowl and fry it slowly to make sure the meat is cooked, and then you eat it! With sauce, and fish flakes and mayonnaise. Yum.

But how did CLU get from the Osaka Airport, clu-less and friendless? [That's why they call this a cliff-hanger]
Kyoto Station
Her tour guide and host showed up just in time to save CLU from totally disappearing under all that water, (see Meltdown at Kansai) and whisked her away to Kyoto, land of great food, great desserts and a ginormous train station hub. It was totally fun carting Buck around on the train, (or did they take the bus? it was all a blur for CLU) and on the buses and up AND down the stairs to get to same. Our heroine loved how heavy Buck was, and cumbersome, and Ruth did too, CLU could tell. (Can I take my tongue OUT of my cheek now?)

Kyoto Station
Then, Ruth picked out a tempura restaurant in PORTA, the ubiquitous underground shopping mall replete with food vendors. Thus, CLU was rescued AND fed, and the only thing she needed was a BED. For six weeks.






Kyoto Station




Alas, she had only 2 nights in which to enjoy the bed at the Kyoto Century Hotel. It was very pleasurable. If messy. Price you pay for having your tour guide stay with you, I guess.
Kyoto Century Hotel Room

They left Buck there. He was desolate. CLU was not.





Empirical spies were everywhere, though. Disguised as wily foxes

Really EVIL looking wily foxes
and interesting street lamps in Gion and other quite clever disguises. Hardly ever knew they were there. But CLU and Ruthie knew what to look out for. Those street lamps can be quite dangerous if you don't get pictures of them.


Our heroines were too smart by far for the Empirical spies, and they confused the spies by pretending to be in Memoirs of a Geisha and while Ruthie ran through the Sembon Torii, CLU stayed behind and took photographs. Photography threw the spies off quicker than anything. They just don't get the stupidity of it.


Pretending to be totally disinterested by picking their ears and wearing their own ingenious spy costumes, our heroines were able to stun the spies into a torpor (or throw them into laughing fits) thereby throwing them off the scent.