Things left behind

I don't even know where this took place. It was towards the end of a trip to Tokyo last month, and we took a local train out to a different suburb to roam every day.

Up on the road in front of us, a woman was crossing the street with her friend. A scarf that was tied to her shoulder back was unravelling, and dropped off.

I didn't have the Japanese to call out to her to stop. And there was no point in English. She wouldn't even realise I was shouting to her.

By the time we reached the part of the pavement where she had crossed, she had long gone. The scarf was already part of the roadside detritus. My friend stepped over it. Nobody else had seen how it got there.

Today, a girl sat at the bus stop, reading. The bookmark that she had tucked into the pages slipped out and fell on the floor. It was a home-made affair, cut out of stiff board. The text printed onto it was cut mid-sentence, the words obviously didn't matter. A cord was slipped through the circle cut out by a hole-puncher and knotted into place. The bookmark was something serviceable, not aesthetic.

And so I didn't tell her she dropped it. The bus came, and we both got on. The bookmark was left behind, soon to become part of the litter blowing in the wind.

I don't know why I'm going on about things left behind. I think it's because I'm forced to revisit some things I'd dearly like to leave behind.

A girl can dream

The nice thing about this time of my life: When you're a teenager with a crush, all you can do is giggle with your friends. When you're a good old broad, your friend sends you flowers and pretends it's from him.

Listen to David

I just got off a lean-in, check-up chat with a lovely lady. She was one of my editors when I got my first job out of university. My co-workers then were like me, all fresh grads wet behind our ears in our first jobs, and she mothered us all.

She is mothering me still. This time, from a distance, in Beijing. And despite her own health problems and caregiving issues. Though I think it's the latter that has made us pull together lately.

She ended the chat with "Have a nice cold beer, read a book and listen to David play.".

That the beer was in the fridge, the book next to me, and David mentioned by his first name made it sound like he was in the next room. If only. :)

But a great coping mechanism nonetheless.

A year to live

The hospital where L is has chalk boards in the lobby where people are invited to write what they would do if they had one year to live. I remember reading in the papers that a very brave terminally ill man chronicled his last year, and perhaps this initiative is part of that book project.

Most people wrote about doing this, seeing that, bucket list stuff.

All well and good but all that doesn't not take into account that a person with a year to live is often already gravely ill and usually already in functional decline and bedridden. Such a patient is not going to travel.

I look at all those well-meaning and well-intentioned comments and I wonder how many of them really thought through the physicalities of life's last year. Because if so, most comments would be about overcoming anger, unfairness, regret and not doing stuff.

A Kind of Magic

I can't remember how old I was when I first heard Queen, but I knew straightaway that the tinny cassette wasn't good enough -- Queen needed to be heard, be experienced "live".

I don't know why I never went for a concert during the years I lived in the UK. Then Freddy died, and after that there didn't seem to be any point.

Still, over the years, the music of Queen continued to pop up in my life, providing some kind of back drop -- a college football cheer, campfire night singalongs, a couple of weddings (both straight and gay), a funeral.

Make no mistake, Adam Lambert is no Freddy Mercury -- but he is the best person to carry the torch. Paul Rodgers tried but never quite got there. Rodgers had the heritage from Bad Company and Free, and when he collaborated on the first post-Freddy Queen album, I got it straightaway. In fact, I tried to get it here before it even came out, and I still remember the quizzical response from the CD shop salesperson when I asked for it -- he wanted to know if I was sure there's really a new Queen album because didn't I know that Freddy Mercury has been long gone? Anyway, that album didn't really work. Rodgers was old school rock, he couldn't bring Queen into the 21st century. And back I went to listening to the voice of a dead man sing.

And then Lambert totally rocked it on American Idol with Brian May and Roger Taylor. It was a work night and when the programme came on, everyone dropped what they were doing and gathered in front of the TV. And look what Lambert is doing with May and Taylor now! Who would've thought.

Freddy's mantle fits well on him. And as if in acknowledgement, he came out for the encore in a crown. (The second encore was May playing God Save the Queen -- and you could tell the embedded pommies in the crowd because they were the only ones singing.)

Speaking of singing, I must've joined in 3 or 4 impromptu choruses (chorii?) of Bohemian Rhapsody with 3 or 4 groups of random strangers, the last rendition on the 1am train out of Raffles Place.

Queen does that to you. It's A Kind of Magic.

Bah, humbug

The first BS of the year comes from my boss. Who sent an email with the usual happy new year greetings, along with "enjoy the long weekend". To people who stayed till late on Wednesday night, came in early on Thursday/New Year's Eve, will be working New Year's Day and also Sunday. Bah, humbug.

I grow old

Last year, I turned 50. I travelled a bit, walked a lot, ate even more. It was a good year.

This year, I turned 51. My father died, my mother is in a nursing home, my dog is going through chemo, my eye got lasered for a torn retina.

Last year, I caught up with my junior college cohort. We were all ageing well.

This week, I got news that the younger brother of one of the guys is in an induced coma, possibly brain dead, after a fall in the gym fractured his cranium. I remember him, we were friendly, the older brother was dating a friend of mine. They later got married. And now, the children are grown.

When you meet people when you're 16, you never think what you're going to be in 10 years, who you're going to marry, how many children you're going to have, how you are going to die. And now, all I can think of is how the years have gone by, and how a family is wondering why daddy isn't home from the gym.

Looks like stuff that's too bitchy to post on FB will end up here

Home at midnight after a night's work, and choosing with care what to wear for an all-day work retreat tomorrow that starts at 9am on a day off, and which features a lunch that my Muslim colleagues cannot eat. The boss said he wanted to take this out of office so I'm feeling free to dress out of office.

Me, keep calm?

I see two problems with this.
1) I don't just want to listen to David Garrett, I need to look at him.
2) How to keep calm when looking at a rock god? Even when he's playing Paganini?

Goodbye, fur friend

Looking at all my pictures of Toby ...

Together again

Mother's Day dinner

Closest I can get to seafood in Japan ... lobster from Boston, and oysters from Canada, pasta presumably from Italy (but a lot of the pastas here are Australian) ... in any case, a cosmopolitan meal :)

Food!

I can't believe I published a whole series of posts on Japan and never had one on the food. So here's where I go overboard ...

Green tea binge ... cake, ice cream and chocolate 

One-woman one Michelin Star kushiage restaurant. We had to look very hard for it in a warren of back streets. Apparently, that back street had the highest concentration of Michelin Stars in Osaka. It had limited seating, mostly at a counter, and we were lucky we could get in without a prior reservation. We had to wait an hour though -- we just wandered around the area in that time. And ran into a Singaporean couple who came to make a reservation for another day. They told us that they had just eaten at a restaurant so exclusive next door, they had to ring a doorbell for entry. So we promptly got reservations there for another evening.

The prettiest salad I've ever seen

Kushiage gives new meaning to fried things on sticks

Kuromon Market

A fishmonger at the market had a sit-down corner so of course we sat down .. with crab, lobster and sea urchin.

I went back the next day for a seafood bowl breakfast. And that was after a paper cup of fresh soya milk and a scallop grilled then served on its shell as a plate. 

Grill-your-own Matsusaka beef. Richer, i.e. more marbled than Kobe beef. We had to make reservations days in advance and toggle our schedule a bit to suit.

Garlic rice, and perfunctory grilled vegetables.

Beans and rice from the market, eaten under cherry blossoms at Osaka Castle, in my own one-person hanami. The hanamis around me were more elaborate. Some of them had barbecues set up. 

Green tea and macaroons at the hotel in the afternoon, a quick pick-me-up before heading out again.  I was impressed in Melbourne with their McDonalds for having macaroons. Osaka impressed me more. These two came from the 24/7 Lawson chain of convenience stores, and at only 200 yen. And came with a wet wipe for you to clean up after your snack.

Not chocolate bars but bath salts

I had no idea what this is called, but it's a wafer base, spread with mayo and some other sauce, and topped with a fried egg. There was no way to eat this without making a mess.

Strawberry fields forever ... in all sizes, and all sweet. The largest ones were the size of golf balls, and those were priced individually instead of by per punnet.

I heard about outrageously expensive melons, would this be really expensive for a melon?

Good tea needs a beautiful cup. Enjoying green tea mixed with fresh roasted rice, Kyoto style,  at home the morning after I got back.

Sakura

This was the most difficult post to curate. I have hundreds of photos of cherry blossoms -- pert ones, droopy ones, white ones, pink ones -- so much so that my memory card was full less than halfway into the trip. How could I possibly pick the nicest ones to upload here?

Hanami parties under the trees. These were low tables set out by food vendors. Most groups just brought their  own groundsheets. And the preparations were elaborate. It wasn't just bentos and six-packs. Many had a hibachi going.

I've heard that hanamis can be raucous affairs. Well, there were groups of students singing and clapping. But they all arranged their footwear neatly before they let go.

Yoshino

"A thousand trees with one glance"