Saved by the Wire

(A photographic reenactment)

I hope this isn't and indication of how my year is going to go.

A few days ago I was going for a walk with Cha. We decided to feed the wild ducks that have been frequenting our little street-side rivers. I brought a pocketful of bread. And I learned something too. Wild ducks don't eat bread. Who woulda thought? Mostly they see the beagle coming and fly away in a spray of water from their damp ducky feet. Quite cute actually.

Here's the little river. The ducks are in the rice field today.

Here we have some ducks beating a fast retreat from Cha, me and our bread of doom.


Duck? Did someone say, Duck?!


We found the first signs of spring. Some beautiful red plum blossoms.



We found this grave-like/shrine-like place.


We walked a bit farther and tried to feed this giant white bird we came across. An egret, I suppose it was. Same reaction. So I gave up on feeding the cold birds and gave the bread to the dog. Which after another five minutes walking caused him to do his business on the side of the road.

We were mostly home, though, when it happened. Right here to be exact.



And this is when things went South. You have to remember it's 7am and I'm in my pajamas (coat, hat, scarf). I've also left my cell phone at the house.

So I whipped the bag (for cleaning up businesses) from my coat only to learn (too late) that it was tangled up with my keys. The keys flew into the air and landed with a chink in a grated gutter. The grate is fastened to the cement around it so I there was no way I could lift it, much too narrow for my hands. Wonderful.

Here I give you the exact grated gutter. There is water running down there, but luckily the keys landed on a pile of muck. Still, I couldn't reach them.


I can't get in my house. I can't call my in-laws to come bring another house key. The only thing I can do is start knocking on doors. At the first door I hear someone moving around, but after a peek through the window (foreigner with dog, in pajamas=danger!) they retreated to the back of their house and didn't answer.

The second door was an old farmhouse. And oldish man answered and I realized all of the sudden while my Japanese is pretty good, I had no words to describe where the keys had fallen. I'm not sure "grated gutter" is good English. (I'm not sure "good English" is good English.). The farmer is a little wary, but decides to follow me so I can show him what happened (generous use of hands to mimic the slow motion arc of falling keys). He's like, no problem and disappears, only to reappear with a long wire he's bent into a hook. Smart, smart man.

A few minutes of me rooting enthusiastically and Cha sniffing just-as-enthusiastically and our hero retrieves the keys. I'm like all thank you, thank you! and he's all it's okay.

AND tomorrow I will buy him some cookies for his help. That family who didn't answer the door, no cookies for them.

Dog Walking 101

I'm doing a little happy dance. This coming Thursday I get to go home, back to the States. It's been two years! The next time I post here I'll be sitting at my dad's computer a margarita in one hand, a fist full of BBQ ribs in the other. I'll type with my nose. If you know me you realize this is indeed physically possible.


It's always a trick to make the big trip across the pond. One of the problems is the dog. Kennels are near non-existent and the ones I've found are mere cages. I did discover one place that actually took the time to walk the animals. It costs over 600 bucks for a three week stay though. Another two hundred bucks and you can buy a plane ticket from Narita to Omaha and back. Anyways, we used that kennel once but when we went to pick Cha up one month later none of recognized him, he'd lost a lot of weight and had this crazy look in his eyes. Something like this:

So this time I decided to hire a dog walker. My father-in-law. Nicest guy you'll ever meet.







There is only one problem -- up until one month ago my father-in-law had never so much as touched a dog, much less put a leash on one and attempted to take a stroll around the block. So my first plan of attack was training.

This ended up being a lot more difficult than I imagined. Little things like his worries about hooking the leash onto Cha's collar ("Are you sure it's going to hold? What do I do if it breaks?")to his tendency to just follow the dog wherever he wanted to go, zig zagging up and down the block, into people's yards down the middle of the road. But there was an even bigger problem.

Number Two.

My father-in-law kept asking about it ("How does he do it?" "What does he do beforehand, so I can be prepared?"). I'm trying to explain the whole event and how to properly clean it up when Cha decides to just show him and squats down to do his business right there and then.

And then the unbelievable happened. Suddenly my father-in-law gets all giddy and crouches down behind the dog. I'm standing there trying to gently persuade him to get back up and look away. But, no. He then begins to make a running commentary about what's going on. Detailed. Yeah, it was traumatic, to me and the pup. I still have a few days. I'm hoping to break the habit lest I come home to an extremely embarrassed dog.

Now, in an attempt to remove that lovely image from your minds... An old instructor of mine e-mailed me last week to direct me to Publishers Weekly Web pick of the Week. I'll just paste the review here, that bad half a sentence and all.

"A Robe of Feathers: And Other StoriesThersa Matsuura. Counterpoint (PGW, dist.), $14.95 paper (192p) ISBN 9781582434896

Inspired by Japanese folklore, Matsuura’s debut story collection is as clever as the mythical spirits and creatures who romp through her fable-like tales. Although her penchant is for the malevolent and unforgiving, , the humans who populate these seventeen stories are seldom innocent victims. Even when led astray by otherworldly tricksters (such as the oni in “The Seed of the Mistake”) or tortured by spiteful gods (like the God of Smallpox in “Yaichiro’s Battle”), it is the humans’ flaws – greed, cowardice, lack of compassion – that make them vulnerable. Matsuura depicts such failings insightfully, and, at her best, reveals them gradually. In a world brimming with shape-shifters, ghosts, and devils, belief in luck and superstition is rational and even skeptics soon become believers, but these are stories about the choices ordinary people make, and the sometimes devastating consequences of those choices. Although some of Matsuura’s denouements are weak, and others overwritten, her prose is mostly tight and her characters well-crafted. The captivating stories gathered here offer lively glimpses of Japanese culture, urban and rural, present and past. (May)"

Surreal.