It’s weird. When Hana’s in a Bonds bodysuit, she looks like an Aussie baby.
When she’s in her Japanese top with laces she feels Japanese.
When she’s a giraffe suit though, she became a soft toy.
I guess the Kuleshov effect works on babies too.
Chika came back at 11am from her town council errand and we went out for lunch.
This time we had udon at a shop where they only started slicing the noodles after we ordered.
Freshness is great but for me, that also means the noodles had no time to ‘develop’, hence not as chewy.
We went to the GU store – the poor man’s Uniqlo next door to buy some winter thermal wear.
After that Chika ran more errands as I swung the soft toy to sleep at home.
Around 3pm she returned and asked if I wanted a hair cut and I said why not.
She made a booking at a Toni & Guy in the local Aeon shopping mall.
Since she would take more time than me, I was advised to start later so we could finish together.
So I walked around, and saw people queuing up for fresh donuts.
(They ring bells to announce, exactly like herding sheep.)
Apparently the McDonald’s special here is an ultra gratin-croquette burger.
I checked out the ‘gourmet grocery’ store.
I had a feeling the family would ask me to cook bolognese for them at some point so I was simply scouting for ingredients.
Glad to see some canned Italian tomatoes as the last time I used Japanese tomatoes, things weren’t too bueno.
I went back to the hair salon, the hair stylist asked how I’d like my hair done.
I said ‘as you wish’ like I’m in a sushi restaurant, only to see her brain stuck in a loop of error commands.
So I indicated ‘side short, middle spikey’ and she finally went ‘ok, ok’.
A different guy washed my hair in a room with the sound of birds chirping.
Question: why do hairdressers always ask ‘when was the last time you had a haircut?’
Does that mean my hair is underperforming and I need to go out and get my hair done more often?
I still finished ahead of Chika so I went to a shop next door to buy a coaster for the family’s tea kettle.
At the moment it’s sitting on top of a memopad.
We returned home to a soy milk based tan-tan flavoured hot pot.
I saw the recipe on the wall this morning so it must’ve been something new to the family.
Fun fact: shabu-shabu mochi – thinly sliced rice cake that you could dip into hot pot, is a thing.
Went to the bathhouse again, this time I alternated between the infra-red sauna and cold bath.
I don’t understand why people want to be famous.
To be able to walk naked between a steaming hot room and a pool of teeth-clenching cold bath, with the certainty that no one is going to care about how I look, felt pretty cathartic.
On my way back I bought some heat pack for Chika’s aching back and a small bottle of shaving foam.
