My weekend

This weekend I went up to Fukushima (the prefecture to the north of Ibaraki) to have an overnight dinner party with my friends Jeff, April, and our other 12 closest aquaintences.  Steve and I made tacos (whose properties of deliciousness and ability to induce opiate levels of euphoria rise in proportion to the length of time since one last consumed them compounded by the degree of alienness of one's environment during said period of separation).  People liked them because they missed American food.  (See, Dwight, I CAN talk like a normal person.  I just have to try twice.)

 

Someone brought Austrian rum.. which was interesting.  I didn't know Austrians made rum.

 

And speaking of potent potables, I found a 70 year old man on the side of the road the next morning as I was walking to get OJ who was most likely suffering their ill effects.  I took a diferent way back from the conbenie (convenience store), and on the return route I looked up to see a man sprawled out on his fanny waving his hands out to me, gesturing and mumbling in Japanese for me to help him up.  Needless to say, I ran over, dropped the OJ and helped him up.  After doing so, I realized that he was capable of standing on his own, but that was the upper limit of his acrobatic potential.  I also realized that I was physically supporting an ex-Yakuza dude.  He was missing two of the three bones of his right index finger and all or most of his left pinkie.  Usually they only take pinkies, so he must have really done something seriously だめ　(da-me, wrong) to get the index finger hacked on.

 

After helping him up and steadying him, he started waving in the direction of 'up the mountain' and I caught the word for 'home' in there.  Since his max speed was some fraction of 1 mph, and I didn't want him to have to walk, I sat him down on the nearest ad hoc bench and told him to 'hang on a minute because I was going to get my car' in Japanese.  Thank goodness I knew that much.  At the house, I grabbed Hideko, one of the young ladies whom I tutor in English, and asked her to help me figure out how to get this guy home.  He was coherent enough to point in the appropriate directions and have a basic conversation with Hideko.  I had to ask him 4 times in Japanese if he was ok, before he understood me, and I have that phrase down packed.  I thought he was still drunk from the night before, since he had clearly been stumbling around in the bushes judging by the bits of plant covering his jacket and pants, but Hideko figured it was just natural mental deterioration.  As it turns out, he lived just two doors down from my friends Jeff and April, and we were able to get him home safe and at least sound enough to walk in the front door under his own power.

 

By about midday we had all roused ourselves to a sufficient level of wakefulness to hit Cafe Bond, which is kind of a tradition after Jeff and April parties.  I had my standard BLET sando (bacon, lettuice, egg, and tomato sandwich), this time with two cups of coffee, and enjoyed the last couple of hours of company by discussing the antics of the previous night.  (I was the twister champion.)

 

I drove Steve, Blake, and Joanna home and Blake and Joanna and I had ice cream in Mito (Joanna's stop) before Blake and I headed to his place and watched the latest episode of Heroes and finshed season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

 

And that was my weekend.  Wish you guys could have been here.

 --
Josh <{><