We were so pooped last night I forgot to tell you the rest of the Costco Adventure story.

After shopping at Costco we planned to have dinner at a restaurant in Hiroshima that was highly recommended by a friend.  We had a brochure of the place with a little map on the back showing a two block radius around the restaurant.  So we typed in the name of the restaurant on Chris’ iphone and set off to try to find it.

It’s dark, we’re hungry, Hiroshima is a big city with a lot of people everywhere and we’re trying to navigate our way through all of this on the “wrong” side of the street.  We eventually get to the location the phone thinks we want to be, in some little alley and I ask the little old Japanese man who seemed to be a parking attendant  where the restaurant was – by showing him the brochure.  He jumped up and grabbed our map and started jabbering very fast and pointing down the alley and . . .

Anyway, this was clearly not the right place.  So, we decided we’d had enough dodging buses, trolleys, motor scooters, pedestrians, cars and would just head for home.  In the process of getting out of downtown Hiroshima we ended up going up a ramp into a bus transit station of some sort.  There was a police man ahead of us so I jumped out of the car and ran to him, flailing my map and he started yelling at me and pointing and jumped in his car.  So I jumped back in our car and he proceeded to give us a police escort all through the bus terminal with his lights flashing.  All the people waiting for their buses turned and stared with their mouths agape.  We weren’t sure if we were headed to the police station or what.

As we finally got through and out of this massive bus complex the police man pulled over so we did the same.  Again we waived our map and begged for mercy and kept saying Iwakuni.  Again, more excited Japanese jabberings and pointing and we were off again this time the police man followed us all the way through the city until we were safely back on Highway 2 headed in the right direction.

Even when we got on the right road it was still a bit intense because of all the signs and not wanting to end up on the Expressway.  Plus the Friday night traffic on these little one and two lane highways was moving pretty slow.  But we eventually made it home safe and sound and had some delicious leftovers –  pork chops, mashed potatoes, and peas.

And that’s why I was too pooped to write all this last night.