Back and Forth, A Burger, and then Back and Forth Again

Our last Ikebana International Board meeting was back in Kamakura. I like this location. It’s convenient for me at one train stop away, only a two block walk from the station, and I pass about a hundred fast food chains on my way home where I can grab that quick bite to ear. This was the entire plan on Thursday… meeting, eat, rush home to write silly research paper on the Quaker history in Pennsylvania. Oh, yeah… and I added a yakitori dinner with friends in there because I felt like it. Which meant that I narrowed my paper writing window down to about three hours that day, definitely not enough for a complete effort, but it was enough for a good start. Or so it was…

As usual, I rushed out the morning of the meeting knowing I would have to hightail it to catch the right train to get me there on time. Locking the door behind me, I was in too much of a rush to put my keys into my purse and instead threw them into the tote I was carrying to the meeting. Eight minutes later, train ticket in hand as I tried to squeeze quickly through the gate, the train doors closed and off it went. Without me. Patiently waiting (read: incessantly tapping my foot and making repeated glares at the time displayed on my phone) for the next train, I dashed to the meeting only about a minute late.

The meeting comes to order. As usual, it goes into overtime. More tapping ensues hidden by the table leaves. Meeting is wrapped. I toss the tote to a fellow Board member and recommence a sprint to the train station. Back in Zushi, it’s time for that bite to eat I mentioned.

Here is when all rushing stops. Food is a major decision, ya’ know??

I bypass the street side shop selling egg salad and tonkatsu sandwiches, and then McDonalds advertising the MegaTamago and MegaTomato. For the record, let me state that American fast-food burger joints in Japan are simply unacceptable. Look at this burger… three, greasy burger patties (one even topped with an egg!) is completely unreasonable for a culture that eats everything else in such healthy portions. And it isn’t just McDonald’s that is response for these atrocities! Look at Wendy’s version… the Super Mega… Even Subway has made a relatively fast food into a fast killer with its creations! Yet, on this day I was craving a burger and a burger I would get. Mos Burger! Not that this place is any healthier, but I like to think that the rice-based barbeque-like topping is somehow better for me. Sadly, it didn’t hit the spot. When I passed the ‘circle place’ fast food chain (we call it that because we can’t read the sign, but there are these pretty circles) with its push-button menu on the way home, I realized the mistake I ultimately made in my choosing.

At this point, I had puttered away a good hour debating on what fast food I was in the mood for. It was time to hustle home to that paper. My feet were starting to hurt in my high-heeled boots and my skirt kept annoyingly ridding up past my burger-rounded belly.

One block from home, I froze in midstep.

My keys.

They were still in the tote, which was god only knows where since the meeting. I know there aren’t really many swear words in Japanese, but we have got plenty in English. Every person on that street and on the train got an earful as I bitched myself out the whole way back to Kamakura and my keys.

The extra expedition had wasted another hour. By the time I got home, the paper motivation was dead. What’s a girl to do then? Why… call her work done for the day and set out early for that peachy chilled chu-hi and yakitori… that’s what. A minute spent to change my clothes and then it was back down to the very same train station I had already passed through… four times in one day. Thank god alcohol can kill foot pain.