The Mystery Revealed!

I guess not.

Woke up this morning to more snow falling outside. Guess it's going to be another walk to work day. There's no way I'm even bothering trying to drive until this weather lets up a bit. Unfortunately, this means I may not drive again until June.

So I walked to school. Let me rephrase that. I walked toward the school. Eisaku was on his way in and picked me up.

I got in to work today and realized that this so-called "mountain of work" that Hiroshi had left for me no longer existed. Apparently, I have the power to move mountains. So I worked on this for most of the day.

For lunch, I caught a ride with Shizuka over to MIT (not THAT MIT). The Muroran Institute of Technology. More specifically, The Muroran Institute of Technology cafeteria.

Cheap and healthy food for all of the students at MIT and anybody else who feels like coming in and paying. Apparently, MIT's cafeteria is a favorite haunt of The 'Gida. I was interested in checking it out for quite some time, but never really had the chance. So when Shizuka suggested it, I was all for it.

Indeed, good eatin's it was. Quite tasty. This place might become a haunt of The Kidd, if I dare to drive Wasabi-kun ever again.

After lunch, we went back to Starfish High and I went back to work...on this. The Australian exchange student came in to drop off a CD for Jack, and Hiroshi and I went over and talked to him. Hiroshi offered to take him out to lunch, and when we heard he had never been to Mosburger before, Hiroshi decided to take him there. I went along for the ride.

This is where the title of the post comes in to play.

I finally figured out what the heck the people were thinking when they named their company "Mosburger".

Mosburger is a really great fast food burger place over here in Japan. It's a tad on the expensive side, but the burgers are good, and in the summer, they have raspberry milkshakes (or a close approximation...I would normally use the phrase "shallow representation" here, but you can't afford to be too choosy when it comes to raspberry goodness over here.). They also have burgers with buns made from rice, or merely wrapped in lettuce. Points for creativity, if nothing else.

I first heard about it from my friend Nabe way back in 1997 when I first came to Japan.

My first impression was that it sounds WAY too much like "Mossburger". Now, I know they eat some strange stuff over here, but there's no way you can tell me that Japanese people eat moss. Yuck.

But Nabe said, "Just try it. It's good!"

And indeed it was. I was hooked. I must have made him take me there at least ten times while I was in Japan that first time.

But I never knew why they called it Mosburger.

Until today. The exchange student asked Hiroshi and I why it was named the way it was. Hiroshi told him to ask the staff member who was bringing us our food.

So he did.

"Umm, let me check on that for you."

Here's the answer to the mystery. They took the first letter from three words they wanted to represent the store, put them together, and added "burger" to the end. the three words are:

M - Mountain - to be as magnificent as the mountains
O - Ocean - to be as rough as the waves in the ocean
S - Sun - to be as warm as the sun

That's the kind of store they want Mosburger to be. Apparently.

Okay then. Works for me.

After that, we went back to Starfish High, dropping the student off at his host family's house along the way. After a couple more hours in the office, Hiroshi gave me a ride back to my place, where I did a little work, read a bit, and was asleep by 8 PM.