Opposites Attract

I already know what my resolution for 2009 will be - practice in the art of succinctness.

Sunday's geeky event was a book reading by author Neil Gaiman. The tickets included a copy of his new book and if they hadn't been so expensive, I would have gone too. As it was, I waited in the queue with Mike, (an event in itself as we attracted a girl bemused by the whole idea, and an old man who proudly declared that he hadn't read a book for a decade), until the last possible minute, then left him, arranging to meet at the bottom of the cherry blossom steps from 4.30pm onwards. As it turned out, it was more like 5pm. It seems life before mobile phones was more romantic and involved much more waiting around, but we get to re-live those days now. Lucky us.

While Mike was away being read to by a talented man, and presumably given some milk and a biscuit and having to cross his legs and sit up straight, I did some further exploring of Japan town. I was impressed with this peaceful part of the city the first time, but this time there was a Fall Festival on and the area was transformed into a buzzing bazaar which still managed to maintain its serenity. This seemed to be the equivalent of a summer fete in a village or school. There were scouts selling popcorn (yes, I thought it was odd too) and stalls where you got to throw things to win prizes, raffle tickets, and someone on a microphone boring people to tears. There were also people walking around in kimonos and their favourite Pokemon character. The highlight of the bits and pieces I saw while walking through the shops, was the community dance, where everyone from the tiniest old lady in traditional dress and fan to spotty teenager in jeans joined in with the most eloquent dance. There was also a tramp dancing, sandwiched in between two women in beautiful colourful outfits, and his movements, although not as precise and elegant as others perhaps, managed to produce a lump in my throat. Morris Dancing paled into insignificance.

I also went into the local Japanese supermarket and played 'guess the product' with myself, ummed and arred about whether to get some eels, or the umeboshi plums which I have never seen sold anywhere else but have been keen to try, but decided as we had already sampled some sushi and very cheesy deeply-savoury cheesecake, and tea tree and white chocolate flavoured manju (which we had to take home and freeze to make the texture edible to our western palates), I decided against it. There is always next time.