Someone I Know Had a Dream...

I dropped in at a bar I sometimes visit a couple of nights ago.  The purpose of the visit was to unwind a bit but also to apologize for the behaviour of one member of our party when we last visited the bar on Sunday night.  "Not to worry" was more or less the response I got from the bar's owner.

At some point or another the bar's owner, Yasu-chan is what I usually call him, asked me about something.  I didn't quite catch what he said and when he repeated it, I didn't quite comprehend.  He did a quick search on his smartphone and pulled up a Youtube recording of something.  He played it for me.  I couldn't quite decipher the kanji but the sound was rather distressing.  Then he explained what it was; it's the alarm sound to alert the population of a missile attack.  I've attached a link to what was probably the Youtube recording my aquaintance pulled up and played for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkc9iQdbbwk.

The gist of him bringing up the topic was the dream he had had that morning.  He was out with his girlfriend for a walk in a park when his smartphone went off with that alarm.  As it finished playing he looked up to the sky and said, "Oh look!  There's a missile".  That was when he awoke.

The rest of the conversation went on to topics such as whether or not Japan had an active defense against incoming missiles, whether combat aircraft from a US carrier stationed in the Sea of Japan would be able to counter a missile attack, and conjecture on how to intercept and shoot down a missile.  There really wasn't any real conclusion to those discussions other than all we can do was hope for the best if we ever hear that dreadful sound....

Gambling Drivers and Drivers Who Gamble

Last night as I was barrelling down the road a car pulled onto the road ahead of me.  There might of been 15m of open space between my car and the vehicle in front of me.  Given that I was travelling in a 50kmh zone, that open space vanished quickly.  I blew my horn to alert the other driver but they were oblivious to the incoming danger.  By the time they started to accelerate, I was about a metre off their back bumper.

The place of business they had pulled out of was a pachinko and slot machine parlour.  As things would have it, the place where they turned off the road was at a slot machine parlour.  Yes, I was on the tail of a gambler drifting from one gambling establishment to another...which was in line with how they gambled on pulling into a small gap between vehicles travelling at full speed.

The above isn't my first incident of annoyance with people driving to pachinko or slot machine establishments.  It may be just me but they seemed extremely focused on where their going and pay a little less attention to the traffic around them than they ought to.  Another classic example, they'll be driving along the road 10kmh below the speed limit until they read their destination...start their turn into the parking lot and then turn on their turn signal.  Actually, that is quite a common occurrence regardless of the drivers' destinations....

Not Quite "Omiyage".....

The Monday before I left on my short trip back to Canada, I mentioned to Minako, the manager of the cafe where I was having lunch that day, my intentions.  She quickly asked me if I could bring back some maple syrup...and then back-tracked a bit by musing that it might be expensive.  I mentioned I had purchased a couple of 500ml bottles of the maple syrup for about ¥1000 each on my previous trip.  "Oh!  Then can you get some for me?", she asked.  "I'll pay you back", she added as some kind of assurance.  A week after my return, she had in her hands a bottle of President's Choice brand maple syrup which ended up display on the cafe's counter.

On my previous trip I had brought back similar bottles of maple syrup.  When my mother and I went shopping for it this time, I didn't have any luck finding it.  As it turned out, the bottles were on the bottom shelf of that particular section at the Shopper's Drug Mart store I was shopping in.  My mother asked a store clerk about the product and he pointed out its location to us.

Later on we were at Walmart.  The prices were lower but the packaging wasn't as attractive.  Sure, it was a couple of dollars cheaper but the aesthetics of a bottle with a stopper are a lot better than that of a tin can of maple syrup.  In my books, the humble can wasn't going to cut it for an item I was going to haul back to Japan from Canada.

"Omiyage", as mentioned in the title of this post, is the term for the gifts one buys for the folks back home when one goes on a trip.  (I pointed out in a class this week that the word "souvenir", unlike "omiyage", can refer to things one buys for oneself...though souvenirs can also be gifts for others.  Yes, my students thought that was a bit puzzling because no one had pointed out that distinction to them previously.)  Anyways, in this particular case, since I was reimbursed for the cost of the item then it ceased to be "omiyage".  It's now just maple syrup in a particular cafe's stockpile of ingredients...which I've been told tastes very good according to Setsuko, an acquaintance who also is a regular customer at the cafe, who was the first person to taste it.  (^.-)