Bish bash bosh my friend,
many miles from Hanson Ranch,
let’s grab some nosebag
Today was fantastic! I
got to see my good good friend Cathal. He’s Irish, but we know each other from
Canada, andhe now lives in Hong Kong. He
came to Tokyo on business, which he will do again while I’m in Japan. We met up
after work in Ikebukuro, shocking some people around us when we boisterously
said hello and gave each other a handshake hug. After meeting we went to an
Irish Pub I had spotted the day before. We got to have a Guinness, or Kilkenny
in Cathal’s case, and catch up. Then we went for supper at a nice restaurant on
the eighth floor of the Seibu part of Ikebukuro Station. We knew it would be
good sushi as it was busy and we had to wait for about thirty minutes, moving
up in the line a couple of stools at a time.
The meal
turned out to be fantastic. We had something fantastic tuna and tried lots of
different things. The only mishap was that we thought the green tea powder you
us in conjunction with the hot water tap at your table was wasabi. We figured
out our error when the two girls next to us couldn’t contain their laughter
anymore and informed us we were mixing green tea into our soy sauce.
I was
so happy to see Cathal for the first time in a couple of years and it was a
thoroughly enjoyable night.
Today’s
poem features some of Cathal’s favourite slang. He loves to say “bish bash
bosh” as you accomplish or decide things and “bit of nosebag” referring to
eating food (horses eat from bags on their noses). The middle line is a
reference to my dad’s old house in Calgary where Cathal lived for a while and
where we lived together at one point when I was home from UBC in the summer. It
also borrows some phrasing from a classic Irish song “Spancil Hill” which I
have loved since my dad sang it to me as a child, and works in the context
because it concerns immigration and homesickness. Not that we were sad, but I
like the connections that can be drawn and come to mind, including the fact
that it was my dad that introduced me to Cathal after they had become friends.
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