Yesterday was March 17th and what better way to celebrate our far flung Irishness than by driving an hour and a half in sleety rain to New Chitose Airport to visit the chocolate factory.
We didn't even wear anything green.
It was a dull, late winter's day over here; Muroran had, unbelievably, failed to provide a parade or even dye green the noxious smoke coming out of the steel mills; and the city had seemingly doused itself in a grey shroud of desolation and despair.
So we jumped in my Mazda, cranked up the Boss and declared Muroran a town full of losers and pulled out of there to win, or the airport, whichever came first.
Now this isn't actually as sad as it seems. New Chitose Airport has recently been refurbished and extended. It now has a new international terminal; admittedly an eerily empty terminal. It also got itself some new shops to go along with the crab and salmon mongers; a decent smattering of restaurants and, of course, the Royce Chocolate factory where you can watch them make chocolate.
The 'them' refer to robots. They only make chocolate now but soon they shall rule the world! And we will have to make chocolate for them!! Mark my prescient words folks, New Chitose airport is where the technological singularity will happen. You have been warned.
Anyway, when not being awed by future cacao powered terminators, we looked at airplanes and wondered if we could hijack one of them and flee to Singapore.
No, we reluctantly decided, we couldn't as so we just bought some chocolate and went home.
And that was our St. Patrick's Day which, on second thoughts, was as sad as it seems.
The following photo I can't really explain. It had nothing to do (as far as I could tell) with the chocolate factory, but this is a Japanese airport after all, so a life-sized furry cow is probably mandatory . And don't get me started on the bears...
No comments:
Post a Comment