Saturday 20 August 2011

Sweet/Cheesy/Meaty/Winey...memories....

My Dad died 2 years ago August 24th.


While Japanese people sit in their cars for hours in traffic jams and go to the cemetary with candles and flowers for a 15-minute pray alongside crowds of people...me?....


I head to the best hotel buffet in town with a good friend (via a handy Velo Taxi!) and eat a vast, VAST French-theme buffet lunch of meat, and cheese, and marinated veggies, and fish, and soups, and desserts, and wine, and cheese, and wine...and....and...cute French waiter...and cheese...and pate...and raspberry tart...and ice cream...and....(repeat till waistband explodes...).


My dad loved a Good Lunch Out. So I've decided: every year around this time I shall go out with a friend and have a Good Lunch Out.
Hotel Mercure feast place...

No pictures of the Hotel Mercure, Susukino feast - because we were too busy eating and drinking and flirting with the young waiter....but my oh my.......it was wonderful.....Dad would have loved it and it reminded me so strongly of our last Good Lunch Out together just 10? days before he died when he took me to a hotel in Malvern in the UK and we had lunch in a restaurant overlooking the English countryside.


****AND!: Okaasan has ASKED us to clean her room!!!
Well, actually she has asked us to help her clean the carpet under her heated table nesting-place, because recently she has had many insect bites on her legs...
I feel pretty guilty about this - it is our fault for not vacumning her carpet enough.
The humid weather has activated all sorts of nasties in the carpet where she always sits, and eats and pisses....
We...well, ME usually - vacumn and clean her room when she is out. Doing it while she is there is tiresome because we try to throw stuff out (old papers/bags/rotting food) she is trying to save it to examine and consider for later. You can never clean as much as you want to when she is there watching and stressing.


But recently? I don't know. I haven't done it so much recently. It's been too hot to do ANYTHING? She hasn't been out while I am here at home? I've been lazy?
Not sure which excuse to use.


But an old lady has been bitten by nasty insect things in her grungy carpet....and today we are gonna clean that room like crazy.

3 comments:

  1. I think going out for a great meal is a good way to celebrate the life of someone you loved, especially if it is something that you did with the person when they were here! Power to you.

    And good luck with the clean up. Hope it goes well and isn't too painful for you all.

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  2. Me too! I loved the story an older student told me a few years back, that his father left the family money for all the brothers and sisters and their spouses to get together once a year for a lunch in a hotel - and every year they do - even flying up from Tokyo to Hokkaido to attend!

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  3. A great way to remember your dad I think. I'm wondering if perhaps mine will turn into a yearly bender on sav blanc. WIll be thinking of you on Wednesday. xxx

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