Day 3???? Repeat after me.

Saturday night....................:-)

He is posting pictures on Facebook of him and friends in restaurants down Tokyo way...I am here in Sapporo with a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau...in a plastic bottle!! When did that happen? I thought I'd developed super-human strength when I picked up the bottle and felt the surface move under my fingers. It was a present from a friend and I didn't take it out of the plastic bag till tonight. Wine bottles usually feel they are alive AFTER drinking the contents. Not before.

 

Another day with Okaasan. All well, did LOTS of duty today.

Gave her lunch and sat and chatted. I had a prompt prop on the table ready - a leaflet of old photographs of Sapporo...which I showed her and casually inquired: "didn't your mother live in Sapporo before she married?"

And OFF Okaasan happily went on a 45 mins of how her mother lived near the river bridge,and how HER father was the leader of two village communities, and how he came to visit his daughter when she married and moved south - he came with lots of money...and then that got us into Okaasan's father and the wooden chest transport business pre-war....and on and on and on.

Loads of repeats - endless loops of the same sentences actually - but she was happy.

After 45 mins I made my excuses, cleared my plates and left her to finish her food.

 

In the afternoon I escaped with a friend to a shopping mall and wandered in all the pre-Christmas jollity..I refuse to do any decorations until the first week of December. Grouch grouch.

 

Okaasan was out downtown when I returned. She got back at 7.45 pm. She said she'd been downtown but "didn't meet my friend today"...I was surprised. "Friend"??? She has a friend? She said there is a someone in the coffee shop she often talks to....which is good. Okaasan has nobody, apart from us, to talk to - so I'm glad that somebody out there is chatting to her.

 I cooked salmon and potato for dinner, and we had dinner together. She was chatty - all about salmon and food and Hokkaido and food...and somehow we got into Korean food - her FAVE topic - and that was into the stories about the restaurant she used to eat at near Ikebukuro station in Tokyo. A few rounds of that story.

But strange - I mentioned that there aren't many Korean restaurants in the UK, there are many more in the US. I mentioned New York/Korean restaurants - fully expecting the familiar story -the JTB guide in New York told me that Korean food is the best in the world etc.

And nothing. Zilch. She didn't start that story at all! Has that memory gone? I haven't heard that story for a year or so maybe...and tonight with the prompts of New York/Korean food is the best in the world....nothing came. She just went back to the Ikebukuro Korean food story.

 

So odd that - a well-trod memory and story just vanishes.

 

Anyway. She is fine. I think I can slip away tomorrow and go see a movie or something, leave her to have dinner alone.