The Kaisu card caper.

We were in a great hurry, Aukje and I. We were on our way to visit Hope Chapel, a small bilingual church in Namba. We had to transfer subway trains at Umeda Station, the largest and busiest in Osaka. We were entering at one of dozens of automated ticket taking gates in the midst of the chaos. We hit that bad boy at great pace. In a whirlwind of motion Aukje deftly slipped her Kaisu Card in the machine and rushed through. I followed closely on her heels, and almost as deftly (but not quite) attempted to slip my own Kaisu Card in the insatiable machine. As it turned out the machine was actually (unbelievably) momentarily satiated, it was not yet finished processing Aukje's card. However, in the microseconds in which this whole event was taking place this was lost on me. As I continued to stride through the gate I fed my Kaisu Card to the machine. The Kaisu Card started to bend slightly under the opposing forces of my digits and the reluctant ticket taker. As the nanoseconds clicked by my Kaisu Card gained more and more kinetic energy. The innocent little Kaisu Card, bent like a spring, a pawn in the battle of wills 'tween this machine and I, could take no more. It leapt high in the air, its stored kinetic energy propelling it upward and forward, just out of reach of my desperate lunging fingers. It touched down beyond the gate which in the aftermath of the battle was flashing and making warning sorts of woop woop noises, which in any language can be understood. I stretched as far as I could and managed to get the tips of my fingers on my Kaisu Card. I backed up and under the tutelage of a ticket taking human being successfully managed to run my card through the machine. The machine stopped its complaining at this point and allowed me to proceed. I lost that battle of the wills, but the war is not over yet. I am confident I will triumph!