A Foreigner's Fire

Japan has small portable stoves that are used to put on the dinner table to make one-pot stew. In our case, we used it to cut our food costs in half by cooking the food ourselves. After all, we live here. We know what the food tastes like. So after a long morning of driving, we stop by a rest stop in Nagoya on our way to Hakone for some onsen. We find a really nice spot away from the restaurants and we were planning a wonderful meal of corn pasta. I assembled the small stove, put in the gas can, and turned on the flame... It started to burn much bigger than usual. Becky and I looked at it with the same amount of strange curiosity when... BOOM!!

Our stove burst into a large fire. I put in the gas can improperly and the gas was seeping into the fire. Becky and I took the water in the pasta pot and pour over it, but the gas was still leaking through making more of a fire. Afraid of an explosion, Ron quickly took the stove and tossed it far away from us. Unfortunately, where he threw it was a large amount of dry grass. We screamed for Ron's attention and he again tried to pick up the stove and started to bash it with his foot. By the all the luck in the world mixed in with a little grace from God, the gas ran out and the fire stopped. My jacket singed a bit, but that was the most damage, besides to our new broken stove. Looking behind us, Japanese families stared speechless at the foreigners who tried to burn down a Japanese rest stop. No wonder they hate us. Ron yelled out a "Daijyobu desu" (We're alright!) and they snickered away.

The worse part was that we were still hungry and in a couple minutes we took out some money that we hoped to save for another time and headed into the restaurant with our tails between our legs. These are the challenges we faced on our voyage. May we be a lesson learned to any traveler who does not look at their gas can when attempting to make a fire.