greatest day ever

This past weekend, I thought it would be a decent enough idea to stay up until 5am then wake up at 9:30 for a lunch at 11. That didn’t work out so well, turning into 10:10 and Melissa doing the cooking I was supposed to…but enough of that. Anyways, tired enough to threaten skipping, I stumbled out of bed, grabbed our bowl of mashed potatoes and wandered out the door. The event we were headed to was an international lunch in downtown Aomori. We had NO clue what to expect.

It started out awkwardly with an elevator ride with an Indonesian lady and her children continuing to a signin for RSVP members…which I neglected to do. Then we tackled the giant room of people including a Russian, a Puerto Rican, 5 or 6 Americans, the Thai lady, and a few Chinese people dressed in fantastic garb. It was kind of intimidating seeing as of the few “foreigners” mentioned(a few lived her permanently and almost all spoke Japanese), there were maybe six times the amount of Japanese people. The awkwardness quickly wore off when our mashed potatoes were a hit(go figure?). And by a “hit” I mean that at one point we caught people taking pictures with them and were even asked for the recipe (simple: take potatoes and mash).

From that event, we headed next door a few hours later to the towns soveigner shop since we typically don’t end up in that area and we wanted to cash in on the free parking we were enjoying. We had no clue that routine stop would turn into a day of classic epicness.

Unlike the typical day of just shops, there was a huge room full of people and activity typically not present. Of course, we had to pop in. What it turned out to be was an even for “old people” to sell goods. We immediately met a man I only know as “Holy” due to the fact his Japanese name means “silent” and thus he referred to the pun Silent Night, Holy Night…creative to pun it up in a foreign language. Anyways, he apparently looked after that group and spoke the only English of all present old folks. There were offerings of paintings, baskets, kids games, sewed items, food, etc. Basically anything the old folks could crank out they had and they were selling it at great prices. We even got a painting 1/2 off because of “friends price.” I guess we got acquainted quite fast. Also along with the handicrafts, there was also some traditional dancing by a few ladies. We got special treatment and called on stage for pictures. It was awesome.

After that, I mentioned that someday I would like to see a shamisen (Japanese 3 stringed banjoish instrument) concert. Holy told me that they actually had concerts in that building sometime and went to inquire about when there would be another. As the day had proven for us to be in the right place at the right time already, the next show was the same day…in 5 minutes! It was so weird how all of these great things just kept happening in such rapid and smooth succession.

I am getting too tired to tell much more, and this is the kind of journal I don’t like so much because it is only a series of events, no real feeling I’m going through, I am going to stop writing after this last quick comment. Not really an event like the rest, but we went in a restaurant to have the entire staff stop working and ask for pictures of us. Like rockstar siting type pics. They lines us all up and pulled out phones and cameras and took pictures of us. I can’t imagine when or to whom they will show them, but I just loved how awesome we appearantly were. Better yet, after all of that, Melissa got pulled up separately to have pictures taken alone by one of the girls(maybe high school or a bit older) and the owner. The owner kept saying “up up up” to tell Melissa to come closer, but the camera-to-Melissa’s-face distance shrunk to almost nil, so I’m guessing that one is going to be fantastic. Not sure why she wanted it so close…

~ by amfenrick on December 14, 2009.