Gaijin Traps

I spent the weekend in Aso. Jamie, Brad and I climbed the jagged peak next to Aso called Nekodake. I was the first to reach the top. I looked over the edge and it was a good 100m drop straight down. The ridge at the top was no wider than a footpath. Really cool though. We barley made it down before dark. That's what a 2:30 start time will get you. Then we spent the evening at various restaurants and bars in Jamie's small village of Uchinomaki. The night ended with me beating Jamie in three straight games of Othello on his PS2.

There are so many stories of things that have happened in Japan. Driving around the mountain roads today made me think of one story in particular. Two guys, Jason and Joe, were driving around on the rural roads. Many roads in Japan have drainage ditches running next to the roads. The are often referred to as gaijin traps, because it is very easy for unsuspecting foreigners to dip a wheel of their car into one of these ditches. One afternoon, Jason was driving with Joe the passenger and did just that. The car was jammed in the ditch and they couldn't budge it. At this point Jason had been in Japan quite a while and Joe, not so long. Jason had better Japanese. He asked a nearby farmer for some help. Right in front of Joe, in Japanese of course, Jason said his friend was driving and stupidly got his car stuck in a ditch. Joe realized what he said a few days later. (The farmer dragged their car out with the help of a tractor, but that's not important) Good stuff.