The day was planned for my partner and me to go to the city that takes
us a 90-minute train ride from home. It was Friday the 13th with a full
moon. As a superstitious person, it gave me a slightly uneasy feeling. I
tried to shake it off and went out anyway. And here are spooky things
that happened on that day.
I had lunch at an all-you-can-eat
buffet restaurant. The buffet included Asian foods as their limited-time
specialty menu. Even for a Japanese, they were novel to me. I tried
them for the first time and quite enjoyed them. The lunch time was
coming to an end and the customers were leaving. The large restaurant
with many tables had gotten near empty. Then out of nowhere, tow young
men appeared with plates filled with food and sat at the table next to
ours. It was weird.
A new customer is usually ushered to a table
by a server at this restaurant. The server asks if there are any
additional orders beside the buffet, such as free refill soft drinks or
alcoholic beverages, and puts down a check and a wet towel – a pack of a
wet tissue is provided at almost all the restaurants in Japan – on the
table, then leaves. The wet tissue and the piece of paper for a check
are the mark telling the table is taken by customers while they are off
to get food at the buffet. The table next to us had no wet tissues or
check. The two men didn’t show up with a server but had already gotten
food. And they sat right next to us among all those empty tables in a
huge restaurant. I suspected that they sneaked in and tried to eat
without paying by using us as some sort of camouflage.
While my
suspicious eyes observed them eating merrily, one of them suddenly
started looking around, uttered “What? What?”, and left the table
hurriedly. I thought there he ran away. But he returned right away and
said to the other man, “My bag is gone.” They began to look for it
around and under other tables. When I was convinced that they finally
ran away, they returned with a server and told her that his bag was
missing. The server replied, “This table wasn’t your table. Yours was
over there.” She brought their wet towels and check along with his bag
from the far table. They were surprised, and said to each other, “This
table wasn’t ours? I thought we were ushered here!”
It was my
turn to be surprised. Didn’t they notice the wet towels? Weirder yet,
were my partner and I invisible? Weren’t we the distinguishable mark for
the table in the empty restaurant? They must have been tricked by some
magic of Friday the 13th’s full moon. That seemed the only explanation.
By the way, my partner himself had walked toward the wrong tables
several times there by the same magic, which he kept from me and
reluctantly confessed me later.
After we left the restaurant, I
shopped groceries at a supermarket. The supermarket had handed out QR
code mobile coupons that I had acquired. There was a machine to convert
the QR code into a paper coupon inside the store since the checkout
counter takes only physical coupons. The machine had a screen that
showed a step-by-step instruction. It looked so simple and easy that a
customer only needed to scan the code on a smartphone. With the
instruction telling ‘Scan Your Phone’ I scanned, but no coupon came out.
No matter how closely I put my phone to the screen, no response. I
tweaked the brightness, tried to place it horizontally or vertically,
uttering unconsciously “What? What?”. About ten unsuccessful sweaty
tries later, I noticed a red light was blinking under the machine. That
was where the phone should be placed. Instead, I was holding the phone
to the instruction screen.
Before going home, I dropped in a
cafe at the train station. The cafe had the sink for customers to wash
their hands next to the pick-up counter. I wiped my hands with paper
towels and threw them away into the trash bin. Although I pushed the
lid, it didn’t open. I thought something had jammed and I pushed several
times more, of course uttering “What? What?” again. It wouldn’t open. I
pushed really hard and almost sprained my fingers. And I saw a foot
pedal beneath the bin. I sweated all over again with my cheeks brushing
while the lid easily opened with the pedal.
I shouldn’t have underestimated Friday the 13th’s full moon. Its magic is dangerous…
Friday, November 8, 2019
Magic of Friday the 13th’s Full Moon hr624
Labels:
all-you-can-eat,
Asian foods,
buffet,
friday 13th,
full moon,
Japan,
Japanese,
lunch,
restaurant,
supermarket