Bowling irritation...

Well, the big day arrived... Ben and yours truly went to the bowling alley early to begin what we thought would be our 20 game marathon, only to find a very kid-busy bowling alley and a very cute attendant who told us, rather too cheerfully, that today was "special day", and that we could only play two games, which were free... I asked her in Japanese why today was a special day, and does this lunacy apply just to today, to which she replied "Don't know!", again too cheerfully.

Well, rules are rules I guess... but I wish they'd warned us about it.. some other regulars turned up to be greeted with the same thing. A shame for them as well as us. We took our custom elsewhere, as did all of the other regulars, and had 7 decent games. The first bowling alley probably lost close to 500,000 yen (if my estimates are correct).

This sort of thing has happened before... Ben and I went there 3 days after the end of Golden Week, only to be told that we could only play 5 games (for more than the cost of 10 games at any other time), and that we would have to use one lane, and not the usual two. The fact that Golden Week had been over for three days didn't seem to make any difference, nor our protests that most of the other regulars had been given two lanes, before and after we arrived.

Just once, I wish that staff in Japan would speak frankly and say things as they are, instead of hiding behind "I don't know" or "sumimasen."