07/07 - Confined to the Past

It's fun to gather

in the hot breath of summer

and share the near past


Today after work the whole crew from our building decided to meet up for supper, to celebrate the second to last Monday of our work contract, the last Monday that kicks off a full work week for us. We met at Tokorozawa Station, near where we live. Everyone grabbed a beer as they filtered in on different trains. Aykut and I were actually a bit early so we made a trip to the one hundred yen shop and played a round of the Japanese drumming game before we went to the meeting point. It was nice to see everyone and Karen, the lovely Scottish teacher who lives in our complex, had booked us a table at a nearby Okonomiyaki restaurant. We went there and had a delicious meal, a couple of drinks, a good chat and even a bit of banter. Aykut gave a speech after being prompted to by Karen, which revolved around the Japanese phrase I wrote about here. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember the phrase and had to use me to prompt him. It was pretty funny.

The most memorable part of the dinner for me was that Karen kept joking around with me that our server and her were great pals. I responded by asking her questions like "Oh yeah? What's her name?" Funnily enough though, as the dinner progressed she started getting into our tables banter and even joining in when people were giving each other a hard time. It is definitely quite rare for a server here in Japan to do anything like that. Then, when we left, we were about halfway down a large block when she came running after us. Karen had left her phone behind and the server had sprinted to catch up with us. Karen gave her a huge hug then turned to me and said "See, I told you we were pals." Or some kind of I told so remark like that.

Today's haiku is a bit of a more traditional take, abstaining from punctuation entirely and mentioning a season. I think it has a nice traditional haiku vibe in the last line too, as I referenced us sharing stories and recounting things that have happened over our time in Japan, but also recognizes the fact that every moment we share becomes the near past as soon as it is experienced. Ichi-go ichi-ee! Right Aykut?