Mall'ed

National Foundation Day. Wife, son and I have the day off. Woo-hoo! Kinda cold and potentially rainy day; park’s out of the question. It’d be nice to get some exercise. What are we going to do? How about drive out to the massive new Aeon-Jusco LakeTown shopping mall? Krispy Kreme, Cold Stone, myriad stores and a bunch of good eateries with lots of room to run around in. It might have been an amusing diversion, if everyone else on the Kanto plane hadn’t had the same idea. National holiday? What was I thinking??? It’s not like this is my first year in Japan, or on Earth for that matter. Ordinarily, the drive from Asaka to Koshigaya wouldn’t have taken more than 40 minutes. But the last 2 meters before LakeTown alone took 40 minutes because of the immobilized traffic cue trying to press into the parking facilities. It didn’t help that my my passengers both needed to pee. But if you’ve ever been out there, it is as boondocks as you get. It looks like they’re building an airport out there, it’s so flat and desolate. Now, I’ve been in squeezes like this, before. I’ve learned that rather than park near the doors, park somewhere a little remote that’s easy to get out of in the evening, when everyone is trying to migrate in unison. We found a remote lot about a block away, perfect. A ten minute walk in freezing winds, trying to “hold it in” until we finally found the toilets. But we’re not happy, yet. It’s three and we haven’t eaten since breakfast. We expected to be there alot earlier. We’re so hungry, we could eat at Saizeria. Where to dine? The Vanguard cafe for scrumptious, gourmet burgers? Country Kitchen for a large stack of pancakes? Pizza Salvatore? Hong Kong-style chinese food? Okonomiyaki? No point thinking. Nearly every place had a waiting line of at least another 30 minutes. We’d be unconscious by then. First place with a visible table. Old Man’s Grill turned out to be a pretty decent steak house. But after that, we spent another four hours trudging through the morass of humanity from one end of the mall to the other. I tell you, if you think Narita Airport offers a long walk, it’s just a warm-up for this place, except Narita has some interesting shops. Here, it was essentially cosmetics shop, single-young-girl’s boutique, baby shop, shoe shop, repeat; like a background loop when cartoon characters run. Nothing in either of our sizes, and little else of any interest. But it took us all that walking to figure that out. No, scratch that…we’ve been to nearly every mall from Saitama to Yokohama and they’re all like this, only about a fifth the size. Okay, we’re slow on the uptake, I know. I prefer to call us eternally optimistic. After five hours of walking and little more to show than a cell phone bob and a dozen donuts, we were ready to head home. Now where was that remote lot? Simple, exit the far corner of the mall, shamble a block down and off we go. It was pretty dark, but after a few blocks, that remote lot was clearly not where we thought it was. You see, as I said before the area is desolate. Therein, every side of the immense complex looks about the same. I gestured off into the distance and suggested, “it must be way over there.” My wife couldn’t get a fix on the point in the distance I was looking at. “That red traffic light, way off in the distance? You might think it’s a radio tower on the horizon but it’s a traffic light. See, it just turned green? I think that may be where we’re parked.” We marched another good length to the next far corner, then to the next and finally to the last of the far corner. My son worried, “what if we don’t find the van?” I reminded him that we were on an island, and eventually we’d either find the van or hit water, and if we did reach the ocean, I decreed we’d give up our life and live on the beach. “Really?” he asked, pinning me down. I think he liked the idea of being beach bums…like in Brandy and Mr. Whiskers (for all of you with the Disney channel). I considered it…”yes.” Now I had REALLY better find that van. Last corner we hit pay dirt and found the remote parking lot. Deductive reasoning never fails-eliminate everywhere the lot is not to determine where it is. Legs aching, gravity set on “eleven,” we agreed this family excursion was a mistake-let us never speak of it again. We’re not going to feel guilty about eating those donuts, because we done-got more than our share of exercise for the week.