Dinner With A Mortician

In celebration of the end of Mid-Terms, and the fact that the weather in Muroran had gone from complete bollocks to halfway decent, I went out for dinner.

You may have seen mentions of my friend Risa in these pages before. Risa is a former Starfish High student, back before Starfish High was Starfish High. She introduced me to a friend of hers who also attended Starfish High back in the day. We'd never met face to face, but we've been e-mailing each other for a couple months now.

Today consisted of administering three tests and then correcting them, so it was a fairly easy day. After a bit of mailing Risa's friend back and forth, I sent her a mail asking her if she'd like to go to dinner that evening. The reply followed soon after.

"Sure! Let's go!"

Cool.

So after work, I cruised back home, changed out of my monkey suit (slacks, shirt, and tie) into something I feel more like myself in (jeans, t-shirt, and a plaid overshirt), and gave her a call. She said she'd come and pick me up, so I told her to meet me over by the local post office.

She came and picked me up and we headed over to a nice little restaurant in Tonkeshi that I'd wanted to check out for a while now. It's a place that specializes in Japanese-style barbecue, or yakiniku.

I should add here that I was feeling a little overwhelmed. I figured it would be a laid-back dinner between a couple of friends, which is why I didn't bother trying to be too fancy. When she pulled up at the post office and picked me up, she was wearing a dress and high heels. And, my oh my (as Dave Niehaus says), she was looking very nice. I talked to a friend about this a little later, and we came to the conclusion that that kind of outfit is casual wear for ladies over here.

Either way, leave it to me to show up in jeans, a t-shirt, and a plaid overshirt. Yeesh.

Anyway, on to dinner. We got a table and placed our order, although we were a little worried, as our waiter was a trainee and didn't seem very confident in what he was doing. (He did fine.)

And we ate and drink and talked. And talked. And talked some more.

It was a lot of fun. She works at a funeral home, and we ended up talking a lot about her work. Fascinating stuff, although some of what we talked about may not have been the most appropriate content for an evening meal. Cremations. Cleaning up the ashes. Dealing with bodies that are a tad...ripe.

She likes horror movies. Zombie movies. You'd think her profession and zombies movies wouldn't mix. I take the line that it's a natural match.

We were at the restaurant for four and a half hours. Just talking, for the most part.

I haven't had that much fun in a long time.