I took a trip to Kansai from August 13 to 16 with my close friend Boo-chan. Before the summer vacation, Boo-chan said “Let’s go to some distant place.” and I agreed. The reason why we decided to visit Kansai was we wanted to watch the All-Japan High School Baseball Championship Tournament at Koshien stadium. Then we talked about the way to go there. We thought that going by car was the most convenient, so I asked my mother to lend me her car. Koshien stadium is in Nishinomiya city, Hyogo. It is about 700 kilometers from Kumamoto. It was a mind-boggling distance for me because I had never drove outside of Kyusyu. But our aim of the trip was to go to some distant place so I decided to go there. Before the trip I bought ETC and installed it in my mother’s car to use the highway. The expressway toll was only 1,000 yen during Bon holidays when we paid by ETC.
The First day
On August 13, I went to Boo-chan’s house to pick him up and left for Kumamoto Interchange. We got a map of Kyusyu area at the first rest area. The map showed all rest areas in Kyusyu. (Later we got same kind of maps of Cyugoku and Kinki area) Though we were afraid that the highway might be very crowded because it was the first day of Bon holidays, we could run smoothly. The opposite lanes were a little crowded. It was heavy schedule to get Hyogo and back in four days. So we planned to go as far as we could on the first day.
We made merry when we left Honsyu and made merry again every time we crossed borders to another prefectures. We tried to go as far as we could as I mentioned above. However, we sometimes took rest at the rest areas to recover from the fatigue of our trip. On the way, we saw the root of the rainbow and the beautiful mountain with clouds. Those fantastic sceneries made us happy.
We arrived at Himeji city, Hyogo on the first day. I was surprised when I noticed that I had driven for twelve hours. (We left Kumamoto at eight in the morning and arrived at Himeji at eight in the evening.) Then we decided to stay there tonight. We stayed at an Internet Café because it was expensive for us to stay a hotel. We went to a police station to ask where the Internet Café was. (We did not want to waste money. We set aside forty thousand yen for our trip including gasoline charge.) At the Internet Café, we took a shower and slept in the pair booth. Then an unforgettable event occurred. Suddenly, a clerk of the café came into our booth and said to me, “Excuse me. Your friend’s snoring is too loud and other customer can not sleep well.” I apologized to the clerk and wake up Boo-Chan. He went out the café and slept in the car.
To be continued…….
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