Friday night most of Kansai met up at this great ramen place near Tim and Catherine's old place. I was an hour late, thanks to the city bus and the hordes of people getting off Kintetsu. (Usually there's more of a sense of urgency coming out of train stations--including the guys who always run in vain after the last train as if there will be a bus waiting for them, but this time it must have been Gawk at Kyoto-Eki Night because there were a ton of people taking their sweet time...) By the time I got to the bus stop the bus should have already left but of course, Kyoto city buses are so reliably late. (Insert my mamonaku ("shortly") rant here.)

Anyhoo, afterward we went bowling. Not just any drab American bowling, mind you. This place was pretty trippy: there were black lights, disco balls, and music videos playing on TVs as we got unlimited bowling for Y1000 ($9). After one or two games, we started finding ways to spice it up. Beer and bowling make for an interesting combination, shall we say. We finally had one of the alley clerks come tell us we couldn't do piggyback bowling, of course in very polite, apologetic Japanese. We would have gotten kicked out of an American alley so fast... Then Oliver decided every frame should be a bet involving the loser kissing someone. So Catherine and Karen ran and hid. Which is understandable: cooties are no laughing matter.