Yuki Ga Sen (Part Deux)

THEN what happened was this....
I looked around in the snow for what seems like forever. Actually it must have been about an hour. Some friends helped me to look for a bit. We were kicking snow with our sodden shoes, trying to uncover the hidden treasure as it had snowed since the battle royale. (All battles are better if they're royale, and I help to make them thus). Eventually I gave up on the search and went inside, demoralized.

The next day I asked my Kyoto Sensei (vice principal) if I could go to a glasses shop in the afternoon, which was free. He commandeered a car; or rather he commandeered a driver for his own car, one Goi Sensei of the crazy tree. Nick also came along, despite an ongoing dispute between the two of them about Goi's ex-girlfriend. A jolly trio we made, but we were united on one front at least: the desire to be out of Nishi Chu. We visited first one, then another glasses shop. I distrusted the aesthetic advice of these two, but I depended on it because I distrusted my own aesthetic tendencies even more, which oscillate between the dully conservative and the gaudily bizarre when shopping alone. At last I settled on a pair of frames whose Timberland imprimatur recommended them to Nick, hard- core rapper that he is. Their ultra-cheap price tag recommended them to me. The optometrist beckoned to me and I sat in the seat of automatic eye judgment. They use a machine that figures out your prescription by watching the eyes focus on displayed images. Very impressive. Then I went to the industrial revolution-era round glasses apparatus with removable lenses, looking like Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow with his inspection headgear. At least I hope I looked like Johnny Depp, but I suspect I looked like Anthony Boylan with funny, round, lever-bristling glasses on.

To make a long story short (too late!) I got some glasses, and walking home in the snow with Nick he spotted my old pair partially hidden in the snow outside our building. They were embedded in an icy tire track, having been completely RUN OVER by a car, and were preserved from destruction by their icy casing. Amazingly, they were only a little bent at the arms, but otherwise unharmed. Now I have two pairs of glasses; a back-up pair in case I lose one in a battle royale.