Give me back my finger

Speaking of posting old stuff... this has been sitting for a year. A year since we sat at a restaurant that no longer exists with friends who are no longer in Tokyo.
Talking about a guy who no longer has a pinkie.
Our friends Alex and Alwyn had wandered into the festivities at Yasukuni Shrine right on August 15 -- a big rallying day for nationalists. Going to see the right wing protests there had become sort of a tradition for the two of them, ever since they had ended up there during their first week in Japan five years earlier. This time, as they were getting ready to move out of the country, they found the ultimate souvenir on the ground behind the crowd of young and old in WWII costumes: a prosthetic pinkie with dirty gauze still stuffed inside. We all handed the finger around the dinner table with equal revulsion and merriment. Yes, that is terrible on many levels.
I miss them.