3am. Lynn was snoring lightly. I crammed in some earplugs and eventually got back to sleep, my mind awhirl with thoughts about my next move.
7am. Lynn was calling, “Anne, wake up, your alarm is going.”
“Aww, I’m sorry!” I said as I rolled out of bed for a scheduled call with my family. I made a mental note to change my alarm from harp music to something easier to hear with earplugs.
The family was gathered for a birthday, and they passed Vince’s phone around. I got to see an extreme close-up of my mom’s nose and then of her husband’s ear. They don’t quite get how it works. Some day that will be me.
A couple hours later Lynn and I were in a covered mall in Naramachi, the neighborhood near our hotel. On our first day, we hadn’t found the “atmospheric” sections but after wandering farther we got why the guides promoted it. Like most places except Disneyland, it is a patchwork of old and new.
Most everything was closed. We tried to decipher the directory.
“I hope they don’t really sell owls,” Lynn the animal lover said.
“Tofu n’ donuts,” I read. “‘The tofu donuts incident’? What the…”
“Maybe it means the tofu donuts experience?” Lynn posited, “or maybe it’s a reference to the war of the tofu and donuts, much like they refer to World War II as the ‘unfortunate period.’”
“That’s pants!” I riffed, using the British slang word for something that’s all wrong. “And what do pants have to do with having a golden day?”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about!” Lynn shuddered as she walked away.
The only place open was a grocery, so we had a gander and I bought seaweed and bonito and a giant sushi takeaway for breakfast. We sat in an area with picnic tables while I ate. “Sushi for breakfast would be a fish too far,” Lynn said. “Give me kippers or nothing.”
There were three coffee shops on the periphery of the seating area, but none were open and no signs indicated opening hours.
After I ate my sushi like a starving shark, we walked until we found a restaurant that was open.
“The selection doesn’t look very appetizing,” I commented.
“But it’s open,” Lynn said. “How bad could it be?
The place was run by a husband and wife team; he was the cook and server and she worked the register, which was festooned with tree branches decorated with tiny colorful ribbons and flags. There was only one other customer; he was smoking and reading a newspaper.
The proprietor handed us menus, saying, “No English,” apologetically. “No worries,” Lynn replied, giving him a big smile.
The pictures were the same as on the sign board outside. “So do you want red, tan, or white food this morning?” I asked her. The proprietor returned and Lynn pointed to sandwiches, then coffee. I only wanted coffee, which caused confusion. There was much holding up of fingers and nodding and smiling and pointing. Five minutes later he brought two huge plates of sandwiches and two bitter coffees and a tiny pitcher of gooey sugary white stuff.
The sandwiches were like the ones we’d been served on our first day at the Nara Hotel—they seemed to manifest the Japanese idea of what westerners liked—soft, white bread with the thinnest slices of cucumber and ham slathered with mayonnaise, crusts removed and cut into triangles.
I transferred half of mine onto Lynn’s plate when she was done so they would think we both ate half our food.
Outside, the mall was now bustling. I found a knife shop where I bought what I hoped would be a good knife for Vince. We stopped and ogled a bun-making operation which used something like the machine below.
I almost took a photo, then thought, “They’re not in the business of providing photo opps; they’re out to sell buns!” So I bought a half dozen green buns filled with bean paste and ate one, then ate them all.
“Where to start?” Lynn mused as we consulted the area map. “The calligraphy museum, the toy museum, the period houses, or the mosquito net museum?”
Breaking Free 