Gaijin-1 Nihonjin-0

Haha, I blogged about this before Himene. Anyway, this weekend I went to Hiroshima , nearest big city to me, near being a relative term since it is about 2 and a half hours away. We went to a restaurant on Sunday night and it was relatively empty since a typhoon was supposed coming. Of course we diverted the typhoon single handledly by later singing karoake homages to the typhoon and thus appeasing the typhoon gods. But back to the restaurant. There were six of us and there was a cheap set menu that two people could share. So we paired up with the intention of ordering sets. The waiter then informed us that since we were a group of six, we couldnt do sets, they were not for people in groups. "What if we split up and move to different tables? Then are we technically in groups of 2?" Himene asked. Well this really threw the waiter for a loop. He thought about it and said it was OK. So two of us moved to a different table literally one foot away and we proceeded to bitch about the absurdity of the situation. The waiter looked really confused, went away, came back, and said it was ok for today only if we sat together and still got the set. Not to knock Japanese people, but I am guessing we were the first people to ever ask that question and the waiter was just unable think that he should say we couldn't get the set even if we moved and that would have been the end of it. There is this inability here to think outside the box and deal with a problem thats not covered in the work manual you get on the first day. So thats why...we win! Foreign ingenuity rocks.