Skip to main content

A Bushel of Leeks

Osamu and I have started to make it a habit to meet outside at 7:35 with the neighborhood kids and walk a bit with them as they head off for elementary school. Now that it's springtime the mornings are cool and comfortable and Osamu is loving it. He runs and jumps and laughs and circles around cars and the apartment building next door and chats up the big kids and the moms. 

We head up to the end of the block and stop at Ogata-san's house since they have three kids going to elementary school this year and they join the caravan at 7:40. After some loitering and parental chit-chat and some cars going by we wave the elementary schoolers goodbye. Once that's done Osamu loves to race me back to the house. He almost always wins. I let him, sort of. He really is fast and I'm not wearing the right shoes. Technically, I guess, neither is he.

He won again this morning and stopped in front of our house as I was coming in second. Eri was congratulating him from the living room window. Then Osamu decided to sprint off for a victory lap and WHAMMO. He was looking back at me as he started off and crashed right into the pavement, skinning both knees real good and scratching his hands and plunging him into a state of disbelief at how quickly the situation had changed from victory to utter defeat.

His knees got skinned good. I was impressed. He wailed and wailed. I picked him and carried him inside and we had to do the whole thing - disinfect and bandage. I remember Bactine when I was little. Man I hated it. There's none of that here, but there is a proper Japanese alternative, and it stings just the same.

Fast forward 5 hours and this guy was climbing to the top of the jungle gym at our neighborhood park.


I had a midday errand to run that required a motorcycle trip an hour south to the town of Watari. The weather was just right save for a bit of wind, especially when crossing bridges and passing trucks. The best part was making it a perfect excuse to enjoy lunch with friends.


We hit up this Thai place in the middle of nowhere, run by an old Thai lady who cranks out amazing, authentic homemade style lunches all by herself. When I called into her kitchen to order pork gapao rice she asked me how spicy I like it and I said just regular. I was pleasantly surprised when "regular spicy" was Thai regular instead of Japanese regular. It's been a while since I had a good sweat while I eat.

Cindy and Michael both gave me a bunch of stuff to take home. Freshly baked pumpernickel, pickles, chocolate-covered dried mangoes from the Philippines, homemade cheesecake, and an assortment of vegetables. Somehow I managed to fit it all snugly into my backpack, with the tops of a bushel of leeks sticking out the top.


After that Thai lunch I was stuffed, but Eri made such an amazing dinner I devoured that as well. 


As much as I love the feeling of being hungry, I am thankful for when I am full. I know that enjoying hunger is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...
1 comment
Read more