It's the great turkey, Charlie Brown!

A Japanese acquaintance asked if I celebrated Halloween, and if that was with friends or family. He looked concerned when I said it was usually a friend holiday, so I asked if and how he celebrated.

"With family, of course."

And how?
"We gather together and eat a delicious dinner with many dishes."
Like...?
"Potatos, beans, anything, but most important is a turkey. Or a chicken.Any bird, as long as it is cooked--" he circled his arms and struggled for the word.
"Whole?"
"Yes!"
Hm. And then...?

"That's all. Is it as same as your country?"

Now, where was I?

A (Japanese) woman at my office told me that she wouldn't be able to come along on an assignment today because she had an appointment in Hartford. I thought, huh, I didn't know we had any clients in Connecticut. Makes sense, though, just a quick train ride away. She said she'd be back at the end of the day. I thought it was nice that she got to get out to the suburbs for the morning.

I snapped out of it and did a little internet browsing. I read something about the political ice cream at Baskin' Robbins and felt bummed that the closest BR was so far away - all the way down at 14th Street.

This is while I was awake, mind you. (I don't know where my co-worker was actually going.)

So, how do we show that the new gum has more juicy flavor?

We could use Japanese drag queens?

Hm, does that have enough "juicy?"

What if we have them riding on the pack of gum like it's a log flume ride...

I'm listening...

And they're all in evening gowns!

Ah, I dunno, something's still missing. We've got the gum, we've got fruity, but...

You're right, you're right... wait, okay, I've got it! Say we put the Japanese drag divas in early 70's black face?

Throw in a Japanese girl on the sidelines, and I say you've got a winner!

Japanese has a word for "become one body with"

We took the train to Shimoda for the weekend.

If you are searching the internet for things to do on eastern side of the Izu Peninsula, I have a few ideas. You should rent a car if you can. There's basically one winding main road that runs up the east side and a few buses that crawl along it once or twice an hour. So it's easy to drive without getting lost, and hard to get around without a car.

This picture is the women's outdoor onsen at Akazawa DHC* hotspring resort. The similar men's bath is one floor up. There are other baths and saunas inside, including tea-cup-ride-size individual terra cotta bath tubs infused with aloe vera and DHC. There are beautiful private baths for up to 6 people, charged by the hour. You can get hotel rooms there with private outdoor baths and use the tennis courts, swimming pool, and bowling alley. The 1600-yen (almost 16 bucks) day pass gets you the baths, piles of towels, an unparalleled variety of toiletries, a tatami lounge room with coin-operated massage chairs facing the ocean, and a crowded gift shop with generous samples of all their cakes, shrimp crackers, and tea.

The ad that led us there promised that their infinity pool baths (or you?) "become one body with the sea." That was indeed the effect if you sunk down to chin level in the water.

Tranquility.

If you sat up a little higher you could see cars winding along the road we had just come up. The effect of that was hurried recall of that drive and whether you had noticed any naked people up on the balcony above and if not, was it because it wasn't visible from the road or because you just hadn't known to look, and come to think of it, there are all sorts of buildings you can see from here and if you can see them.... ahh, chin deep is lovely.

*(DHC is a magical cosmetics ingredient that seems to be the sponsor of this place - it is in not only the name of every single facility and all the free body and hair care products, but in the bottled water and the currant sauce for the ice cream.)

UPDATE: I am totally confused. DHC is a catalog cosmetics brand, not a chemical. That makes the DHC swimming pool less dubious, and the DHC bowling alley stranger.

For my sins

I rode on ten different trains for work yesterday, five of them at rush hour. And up and down four elevators that had lines to get on just to make it to the 20th floor. I was not on speaking terms with Japan for a few hours.

The only ones who can help

These are not nine boxes of wine stacked outside my next-door neighbor's front door; they are nine boxes of L. Ron Hubbard lectures on CD in Japanese.

Teach your parrots well

There was a lost parrot a while back that got itself found because it could say the name of its pet shop.

The flier taped up on light posts around the Kayabacho neighborhood in Tokyo says that this lost parakeet only knew its name and 'good morning' when it flew off the balcony. (The balcony?)

I'm wondering if each of the pulled phone number tabs really represents someone who caught sight of a dazed bird chirping "Ohayo! Ohayo!" and wanted to give the owners a call.

Something to inspire people on their way to work

The most depressing lobby art I have ever seen - a sad, naked man in a wide, marble space.

"Another day at the office. Sigh. Oh well, at least I have clothes on."

Anyone can char a piece of toast

...but it takes a special skill to actually set it on fire.

I can't take all the credit. We are lucky to have not only three gas burners installed in our kitchen (many kitchens come with zero and people set up a semi-portable ring or two) but a little built-in oven underneath, too. It's made for broiling a fish. And not a large fish. A one-person fish. Maybe two such fish, side-by-side. The oven doesn't have a dial with pictures of toast, just a knob to control a ceiling of open flame that sits quite close to the grill. The real estate agent warned us that it was only for cooking fish, and that we had better be careful to fill the pan under the grill with water before trying to cook the fish, because if we didn't, it would burn and the kitchen would be ruined. (This looks like a dicey idea, by the way, because the grill unit is attached to the door and I can't imagine that sliding a shallow pan full of hot fish water in and out of an oven with a jerky mechanism would go smoothly.) This scared us away from the whole fish-in-the-oven idea, and we've been sticking to using it for making toast.

In a city where lack of good bread is probably near the top of any Euro/American gripe list, Jim has found delicious whole wheat sourdough near his office and keeps us steadily supplied. It makes perfect toast, all the tastier, perhaps, for the art and science required, from setting the heat to turning the bread over at a good time to taking it out at the right moment without the benefit of being able to see into the oven. We've had a few pieces get a little dark now and then when one of us pops bread the oven and then wanders into the living room, gets distracted, then sprints back into the kitchen when the burnt smell starts wafting.

But the special skill comes in being able to stand over the oven, stir frying, without giving the bread another thought until opening the oven to see if it might be time to gingerly reach in and turn the tanned slices over and realizing only then that they are not only fully blackened but engulfed in flames.

When the fire died down, Jim scraped the charcoal off the top of one piece. The bottom was still soft and cool to the touch - pain brulé. He put it back in the oven, black side down, to finish toasting. I tossed the other piece in the sink.

If you have any clever ideas about "remembering what setting is a good temperature for toasting bread" or "using a kitchen timer," you do not appreciate the zen challenge of starting anew each time. You probably don't set your bread on fire, either.

That's bananas

The big craze sweeping the nation and emptying the produce shelves this week is the "morning banana" diet.

You have a glass of room temperature water in the morning and two bananas.

The rest of the day, you eat whatever you like.

Ta da!

A Dole spokeswoman said this morning that banana imports are up 25-27%. (She didn't say if that was before or after the so-called "banana boom." They've had a well-advertised foil-envelope-goo product on the market for at least a few months called "morning banana," and I wonder if they started this whole thing on purpose.) [This suicide fruits picture is not Dole - it's a copycat that just appeared maybe this week.]

Girls interviewed on the street for a morning news/variety show said they were all doing it, and their mothers, too.

I've found that bananas here are tougher and less sweet than at home and cost three or four times more (a buck or more per individually bagged piece), so I haven't been eating them. I miss grabbing a cup of coffee and a banana on the way to the subway for a dollar. I was a banana diet pioneer!

Except that a panelist on the news just mentioned having coffee with her morning bananas, and the rest of the panel jumped up to remind her that you are supposed to eat them with water. Your magical fad diet will never work if you do it wrong!

Walking 60 miles per hour

There are no poles in the aisle of my second morning train and the doors are unlocked, so a column of people moves single file from the back toward the front. Why not front to back?

Friends don't let friends

I fear that someday I will be the news peg for a "small but increasing number" story about people run over in intersections because they were writing text messages instead of watching where they were going. 

Maybe this subway ad will help. That and a few more toe-grazes on the sidewalk by swerving grannies on bicycles.