On On! St. Louis style

Yesterday, I joined my first hash in the US of. I joined my friend Jon and sister Katie and about a dozen older folks for a nice jaunt through some suburban wastelands. The hare was a 40 year old gentleman who went by the name of "Duzzy Cum".

It was quite a different course from what we have done in Japan. Even though we had city hashes in Kumamoto, a lot of those went through a lot of parks and wooded areas. The hash yesterday involved a lot of street running and crossing over busy six lane roads. I have been involved in over thirty hashed in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, but yesterday's hash involved two new experiences that I assume are common elements to American hashes.

1) For a stretch of the course, we ran down active railroad tracks. Oh, there are lots of railroad tracks in Japan but for one reason, we tended to avoid them in most hashes. The reason is that while train tracks in America my have some traffic from time to time, it is still less than the train-every-5-minutes you get in most areas in Japan. Train tracks are simply not a smart place to hang out, also considering there is often few places to get out of the way when a train approaches. I also might think that the instances of suicide by train blocking would make some train officials quick to react seeing a group of foreigners jaunting down the line.

2) The course also took us through a large cemetary. The fact that bodies are cremated and the shortage of usable land makes the traditional western cemetary exceedingly rare in Japan. Many of our hash courses passes by shrines and family memorials no doubt, but a course winding through the headstones and memorial statues was not often experienced. (We even had to take a detour because a lady was praying beside a headstone on the course. Luckily we saw her in time and refrained from yelling "ON ON" or some other hash gab.

Because Katie lost her keys on the course and I drove her back to look for them, we missed the circle and religion, but my friend Jon, as a hash virgin, was given a plunger with which to drink Milwaukee's Best Light and donned a toilet seat as he was serenaded by the Big Hump St. Louis Hashers. At a nearby pub, Katie was recruited to be a hare at next Sunday's hash, almost assuring her immortalization. I plan on being there for it. On On!