Searching for the perfect fish.

Sapporo Snow Festival weekend - and it is snowing and snowing.

Last night we went out for dinner with a big group of foreign visitors, who I'd brought together via two travel websites I am involved in. 15 people from 7? different countries. It was a fun, drunken night in the snow.

At lunchtime Yujiro had told Okaasan that we were out for dinner and that she should order in food. But then he forgot to telephone her at 6 pm to remind again her...and she forgot what he'd said of course...so she sat at home waiting for us to call her that dinner was ready...I'm sure she didn't starve because she has lots of bits and pieces around...but it was a slip up.

Today we persuaded her to get dressed and come out in the car to go to a shopping mall and have lunch. She's been in and around home for 9 days now. Her leg is ok for walking on, but is still painful when she steps too hard or quickly. She refuses to go to the doctor.

I cleared 25 cm of snow off the car and dug it out and we drive to a new shopping mall that has a Hawaiian dance shop. In March Okaasan's dance group have an event in a local hotel (Yujiro called the dance teacher to check the exact details, because Okaasan kept saying it was "next week").

Anyway. We get to the shopping mall and end up in the soba restaurant having noodles. At the end of the meal Okaasan tells me it didn't taste so good.

We walk round some shops with her.

Then we take her downstairs to the food. While Yujiro goes off round the supermarket to shop..I hover round the specialist fish counters with Okaasan and try to get her to decide on some delicious fish for dinner.

I tell her straight: "Recently, you criticise a lot of the fish we buy and cook. So why don't you choose the fish for tonight. Then it will be delicious."

We go round and round the counters. Half an hour. She peers at stuff. Samples the free offers they are handing out. Drifts and peers some more. Buys nothing.

"None of it looks any good".

So. I suggest we go to Ni-Jo Ichiba. It's the city fish market where all the tourists buy fish and all the big fish companies have shops.

We drive there. I sit in the car controlling my anger. Yujiro and Okaasan drift round THAT market. After 40 minutes I telephone Yujiro on our cell phones and say: enough is enough. She'll eat what we serve and lump it. I would like to go home and have some kind of Sunday. With what's left of it.

On the way home we stop off at a local, fairly good supermarket and I go in and buy the most expensive piece of herring I can find.

I am pretty angry with this woman. I know she has memory problems etc etc. But this is ridiculous. If you don't like what is served and you don't act on TWO opportunities to buy better. Then you are stupid. It's not memory. It's rude ungratefulness.

She doesn't deserve us.
He's trying hard. I'm trying hard.
I'm feeling pretty murderous actually.