Couch Trip II

Well it’s Christmas Eve, still no snow, I got nowhere to be except here listing to Merle Haggard singing about hating December so let’s talking about yesterdays second couch trip before I decide to stow away in a pet carrier on the first flight to Canada so I can make it the annual family gathering at Gran’s before the first bowl of chips is finished.

Al was running late. It was 330 and he was supposed to have been here an hour ago. Was he coming? Was he not coming? I decided to give him another half hour before I gave up and headed on out for some groceries now that I had a bit of an appetite after three days of having none. Then the phone rang. He was on his way. I grabbed another piece of the couch, shucked it outside the sliding window/doors that will soon be covered by Nostradamus again, gingerly placed it over the small fence and into the parking lot, tossed on a coat, grabbed the wallet and keys, and walked around the other side to the couch piece. I had to head over to the city Company School as I had books to return from lesson planning so I would drop the couch piece off there, meet Al at the station and bring him back to my place to get another piece of the couch. Easy plan and it went off without a hitch. I took the lighter piece, no arms, this time around and it felt like 30 tons were removed from the weight of this thing when you took an arm off. I carted this piece over with ease, tossed it into the class, met Al and saddled him with the heavy piece. “Do you want to grab an end?” he asked. “No,” I replied having already carted two pieces of this thing on my own. Your turn, buddy.

So we’re at the station. There is nobody there. Remember yesterday was the Emperor’s Birthday. It was a National Holiday so nothing would be open, nobody had to work and there was no school. We expected the train to be pretty empty and by the looks of things at the station we were right. All that was there at Unebi was a cat. Hold on a second? There was a cat but it wasn’t Skimble! On the end of the platform sat a fat orange tabby. Skimble’s box was empty and so were the food plates? Were these cats horning in on Skimble’s turf? I chased the tabby away. This was the home of Skimbleshanks, buster. Don’t you forget it. That cat earned this spot! We placed the couches next to the plastic seating on the platform and enjoyed a rest while waiting for the train in our much more comfortable station seating. When a few other passengers came through the turnstiles the looks that we had received on our way here continued. You’d think the Japanese had never seen two Canadian men walking around with couches on their heads before! Sheesh! Al and I started to talk about excuses we could make should we find ourselves being kicked off the train. I suggested that we tell the train conductor that we were Couchists and we have to wear these couches as part of our religion. To us, they were like burkas. He didn’t think it would fly. Alright, how about this, says I? What if we pretend they are funky new designer suitcases? The train pulls up. The moment of truth once again only this time I’m going to have to walk into the moment with this guy. Al goes first, pushes his piece onto the train and I quickly follow. He motions me towards the small doorway between the two trains wanting to get through before the conductor could spot us. I was pretty sure our cover had already been blown. The driver would have to be Ray Charles to not have seen us. Everybody had seen us. We were big flashing neon signs holding couches to these people. I’m not the most graceful of couch movers and there was a moment when I thought that I would be stuck in the doorway but a quick push got me through. On the other side a few people applauded us. Seriously, folks, if ever you want to make it big as an entertainment act in Japan you don’t need to sing or act. Just cart couches through the city streets. You’ll reach Tom Cruise status in no time. (Tom Cruise? Couch? There’s a link here somewhere) It looked like we had made it. We put the pieces at the end of the last car and sat on them which I instantly thought was a bad idea. We wanted no attention but were attracting a lot of it especially from these three young guys. What a group of idiots. They started to give us these ludicrous signs of support for our couch moving efforts as we tried to ignore them. At one point all of them were sitting on the train floor in a mimic of us on the couches. Then they were sitting on each other pretending to be couches. I told Al that maybe we should just stack these things and sit on the train seats. He agreed. The couch harassment stopped and we managed to make it all the way to Nara without incident. All in all, the couch moving was a snap.

Outside the station we walked by two Lawson store clerks who tried to sell us Christmas cakes. The girl was a gorgeous Japanese woman bedecked in a sexy Santa suit and the man was…ummm…you know, I think he was a reindeer but I don’t think I looked at him what with the gorgeous Japanese woman bedecked in a sexy Santa suit to drool over. However I don’t believe the best way to go about picking up women is to go about it with a couch on your head. I politely turned down her offer for cake and we finished the couch journey in Al’s living room where these two pieces were rejoined with their brother that had left a week before. I plopped myself down on it, enjoyed some Kimchi and rice cooked up by Al and we watched the new Die Hard flick on his wall. He’s got a projector, you see. Technology is lost on me. I’m comfortable with just a small television. It’s time to start the Downsizing Revolution!

On the way back home there was another example of why I don’t drink sitting a few seats over on the train. This drunken nutcase is there talking to himself and then screaming at others as he stumbles up and down the train car. He had these ears that, I swear, were on the top of his head. This was a high eared man. He stops the train conductor every stop and slurs something, he’s ignored, we move on. I think he had missed his stop by about seven stations. I kept expecting him to fall down the way he was walking. It was inevitable that he’d try to talk to me at one point. I was the closest person to him with the rest of the passengers on the car inching slowly away. He started towards me, opened his mouth, I shot him a look that read fire and ash and the mouth closed and the man moved back to his seat. I was happy to be rid of him when I got off the car at Unebi. But what was this? Another cat! Again, this wasn’t Skimble and it wasn’t the fat orange tabby. This was a fat black cat. You feline fiends! I walked towards this one and it tore off into the bushes. Skimble was nowhere to be seen. I imagine him putting up a good fight. He’s like the Rocky of cats to me. Okay, so back home now I was with some ice cream for the soar throat and two more sleeps till Christmas. The place looked empty without the couch. Well, three down and one to go.