June 27th Sunshine Makes Me Smile

Rainy season is here which means after several days of cloudy, drizzle and rain I was tickled pink to wake up to a beautiful SUNNY day! I LOVE sunshine, always have. I am not a winter or a cloudy type personality, I like warmth and sunny days and green leaves and grass!

 Maybe it's a throwback to my birth, Mom says my first sight was the sky and sun shining in through the glass ceiling of the delivery room... whatever it is though today made me happy! I'm a country girl at heart but if this life has called me to live in big cities then I'll take the sunny days at least and enjoy them!
When I awoke Gary was already out and about Mitaka taking care of stuff so I dressed and headed to the library on Speedy. There is a young man that works there that speaks some English and I wanted to give him one of our invitation cards to the English conversation group we're starting. Unfortunately, it must of been his day off, so I borrowed some books, stopped at an apartment complex nearby and left invites for folks there and then headed home. One book I found is interesting. It's called 70 Japanese Gestures. I know that in Mexico there were hand signals that we learned that meant different things so I thought I had better check out the Japanese ones too since I'm always questing to look less stupid in whatever foreign country I'm in. (Not that it works because if there is a way to do a faux paux I'm almost guaranteed to do it!) Well good thing I got the book because according to it I better use the thumbs up sign when I'm trying to indicate something is okay and not the okay sign (like I've already done ...) because the okay sign is a sign for a certain male contraception! EEEEKKKK!!!! No one has looked too shocked at me though so I hope that means they know what it means in English!  As we say in my land....UFDA!!!!
Gary was home then and told me of a salary man café that served a Japanese breakfast... which appears to be a regular Japanese meal (rice, fish, soup)with an egg and/or sausage added. It was only 400 yen though so that's a great deal! He said he spent a lot of time marveling at an old man that looked to be about 200 years old eating his breakfast! I have not met this old man but I have now named him Methuseleh in my head!
After I finished up at the library I came home and headed over to the dry cleaners to pick up the futons I had left there a couple weeks ago. They were both ready but it took me two trips to haul them both home.
I took a little break, then hung laundry...gotta take advantage of the sunny days and then decided to head out again to run some errands. I ended up back in our old neighborhood.. Fuchu. It takes two buses and a train to get there but it really is a nice little area of town with lots of little shops and stuff. There is also a second hand store there that I like and I found a cute little purse so that was nice. Gary had mentioned to me before I left that he wanted some hakusai no tsukemono. Tsukemono is any type of Japanese pickled stuff you can serve on the side with rice. There are many different types as you can see from this picture here.


Hakusai is the Japanese word for Napa cabbage and while we've tried some from the grocers they haven't been as good as my Mother-in-laws.(As if that would be possible!)  However, as I was wandering Fuchu I came across a little vegetable stand and there was a little old lady seated, cutting up some vegetables for something and right next to her was a large bucket of Hakusai no tsukemono! I pointed at it and said, "Hakusai?" She looked all surprised at me and laughed alot and said, "You Rike?!" Anyway, she sold me some and I brought it home on the train and the bus and the nice people probably never guessed it was the gaijin making them smell like Hakusai! It is much better than the grocery stores.. but of course, still not as good as my mother-in laws!