Classical mechanics at work. Perhaps this is what physicists do when their colliders are broken. (photo from the net).
The welcome banner for the 51st Mita Festival.
A takoyaki stand, one of at least forty different booths selling all sorts of yummy food at reasonable prices.
A band playing South American music- and singing in Spanish!
Booth with beers from all over the world.
Bewildering assortment of festival-related ads inside school building #1.
A few of the finer offerings from the Model Club.
The lovely young woman who seduced me and brought me to a Rakugo performance.
I was privileged to meet Zetsubou-sensei on my way out. But he despaired to see me.----------------------------
Today, I realized that the cellphone decoration Maya gave me after her trip to Kyoto was broken.
It's a woven green cord about three inches long, with four soft little silk ornaments in autumn colors attached to it by green string- a tiny mushroom, a tiny leaf, and an acorn, with a larger mushroom attached directly to the end of the cord and completed by a little golden bell. The stem of that mushroom was all but torn from its cap, along with the little golden bell at its base.
After mending it as carefully as I could with clumsy fingers (I pricked myself rather badly on the needle), I drank a cup of vegetable juice and a cup of water while reading the online newspapers. Towards the end of the morning, I took a little salt with a vitamin and more water, and decided I would try to catch the last day of the 51st Mita Festival.
According to my driving school instructor way back when, the hardest day of any fast is the second. And I have to tell you, I was put through a particularly severe test today- with the stunning abundance of novel, delicious, cheap foods being proffered and hawked at me at every turn.
The crowds were tremendous, the variety of stalls was stupendous. There were live bands playing everything from J-Rock to Mariachi to Techno. There was even a boxing ring set up under a ginko tree, although all I saw people do on it was sit around and chat.
There were booths selling imported wine and beer, and inside the school buildings almost every club, or so it seemed, had a room to itself. You could get your palm read, go next door to a Latin Bazaar to buy a Chilean flute, and then the next room would be dark, plastered in black paper and LEDs, with a bar selling cocktails for 200 yen a glass. After two or three drinks and feeling a little tipsy, one could stagger into the now blindingly bright corridor to admire time-lapse photography of the night sky, courtesy of the Astronomy Club. And that's just the first floor of the first school building.
It was all very overwhelming, and more than a little bit lonely because I was one of the few people I could see who was by himself. I looked around idly for someone I knew, but almost everyone was from the main student body (i.e., not from the International School). And the only way I could keep myself from breaking down and buying $40 worth of food was to promise myself that I would be back some other year, with loving company, and to think of what I could prepare on my own after the fast.
So, since my mind is on food, let me get some ideas down:
1) There were "Potato Tornadoes" on sale: A small, peeled potato, skewered lengthwise, spiral cut on the skewer, stretched out into a corkscrew, and deep fried. Since I don't have a deep fryer, I'm thinking of drizzling the skewer with butter and a sprinkle of rosemary and basil, and baking it in the oven once I get back to America. Yum!
2) Waffle-covered hot-dogs (with flavored sweet cream cooked in?). They called them "Shinjuku Dogs"
3a) Takoyaki crepes. Balls of savory takoyaki sprinkled with nori and katsuo-bushi and Japanese mayonnaise, turned into a portable, delectable hand-held taste experience by a unifying layer of folded crepe. Sort of like a strange, endlessly superior taco. Ooh.
3b) Hand-held okonomiyaki.
And those are just the most important ones.
And in case anyone out there is worried or thinks I'm being foolish for fasting, yes, it's probably a stupid, pointless exercise in masochistic asceticism resulting (irrationality acknowledged) from a traumatic breakup, but I know what I'm doing and I'll know if I need to stop. I'm allowing myself juice, salt, and milk (in addition to water), so I'm keeping my blood sugar and sodium levels more or less where they ought to be.
I suppose I am acting out a need for intense personal discipline and self-reform. I think too many of the problems in my relationship with Maya stemmed from, or were exacerbated by, my own selfishness and immaturity. In short, I need to grow up.
I foresee the quality of my work dropping off in the next few days, so I think I'm going to keep myself busy tonight by drawing up an outline for a discussion in Japanese class on Population Issues in the United States.
And I want to thank everyone who has provided me with sympathy and cheer during this confused and unhappy time of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment