Wandering our way to Okayama
Andres fed us bananas and made us Colombian coffee from his stash, which was actually from his uncle's farm, and we all ate granola from our ukulele bag stash of travel food.
They dropped us off down the road and we were picked up next by a mother and daughter who were on the way back from the daughter's figure skating competition, and whom were the beginning of a day full of silly mistakes. 
They dropped us off not at a service area, but on the side of a bypass in Ashiya (where I will never go again) near Kobe, where it was absolutely impossible to catch a new ride. After nearly getting run over trying to hitch there, we took a train down the road a bit to a place where it looked like we could walk to the service area from the station. The whole time we were on the train, a foreign man sat in front of us, staring blatantly while eating boiled eggs from a huge bag full of them. Weird. Anyway, when we got off the train, we first learned how decieving maps can be. Sure, the service station was pretty close- had there not been a mountain in the way. A very kind man, who we dubbed "Pineapple Guy" actually went out of his way and made himself late to work to drive us onto the expressway and drop us at the service area, giving us his card and making us promise to phone him when we got to Okayama to let him know we were okay. He's the only ride we don't have a photo of! Sad!)
...and then we found our most fantastical ride of all: Nobuyuki, trucker from Hiroshima.
We spent almost eight hours in Nobuyuki-san's truck, the last few hours hiding like fugitives behind a curtain in the truck while he dropped off his various loads. He vibrantly told us stories about pachinko, about his life as a trucker, about his wife, two kids, and his newborn baby. At about 9 pm he drove us over to the part of town where our friend Maria's aunt lives, and after some phone wrestling/direction giving/sudden switches from Hiroshima-ben to super polite Japanese, we found a meeting place where she could pick us up. Nobuyuki waited with us until she came, and meanwhile he bought us tea and we loaded him with anything presentable in our bags- ie candy and coffee from the States. Then Maria's aunt came bearing the cake she had got for us, and we all insisted that he take it. (He told us later he gave the cake and coffee to his wife and kids, and they were really happy) What a wonderful Christmas Eve! (We had to periodically remind ourselves that it WAS Christmas Eve).
We then spent an hour in the local sento, soaking in all the baths and being a bit harangued by a cultish seeming woman who followed us from bath to bath. My wisdom from this day: It's much easier to deal with all sorts of odd people when you're not both naked. Beware of clingy uncomfortable people in the baths.
