5 - 9 hour road trip

On Saturday we took off to a place supposedly 5 hours south of kumamoto called kagoshima to participate in the dragon boat races, where strangely enough, boats with dragon heads race against each other. We had reserved our own dragon boat and I was super duper excited to be the official dragon drummer (where the rowers row to my beat). SO NINE HOURS later, we arrived. According to my calculations, we had to ask 5 conbene's (convenience stores), an onsen, the restaurant JoyFull, and finally a Japanese family for directions. This dad, mom and child drove with us for about 20 min out of their way, to make sure that we went the right way. I couldnt believe it! Who does that except for serial killers?! I have 3 letters: OIJ. That's my new quote: Only In Japan. They were SO freakin nice; of course we gave them whatever we could scrounge up from the 9 hour food stash, like a super sweet box of chocolates and ALL of our oreos. Anyhow, we sang at the top of our lungs, had multiple dance parties, sang happy birthday to the car on its 150thousandth mile, anything to keep us believing it was only 3 hours and had probably the best 9 hour road trip. I ate at conbenes all weekend, which I had heard of people doing, but had never done myself and hopefully never will again. We arrived, danced, had a great night, went to bed at about 5am, woke up at 7am, and got ready for the big dragon boat race.