Blogging from work still carries a very guerilla feel- I'll keep this short, but there are sometimes things that happen that I need to let people know about.
Friday night, in the midst of some aimless wandering in Kusatsu (the small town next door to Ritto), I came across what appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be a Steak and Shake in the middle of rural Japan. It was a small shop sandwiched between a karaoke bar and someone's house, and upon entering (and removing my shoes in exchange for a set of slippers owned by the house), I stepped up onto the immaculate black-and-white checkerboard floor and into the 1950's as viewed through a broken funhouse mirror. Every surface was bedecked with oversized black-and-white headshots of celebrities. Audrey Hepburn smoldered over the entrance, James Dean reclined over the jukebox, and clean-shaven waxed-hair hotrodders lounged in their frames over the widescreen plasma TV. The proprietors, a Japanese oldies rocker (his guitar was neatly packed in its case between two amps- one, petite and clean, and the other a bass cabinet roughly the size of a fat man's wardrobe) and his Filipino wife walked up, and welcomed us into the empty shop in perfect, immaculate English. Next to the jukebox was the store's only nod to its country of residence- a potted bamboo plant.
The owner, evidently, had fallen in love with America of the 1950's when he was but a child- he saw American Graffiti when he was in Middle School, and caught the bug HARD. He owns a beautiful pink 1959 convertible Caddy. His picture, with his car, features prominently in a vintage car magazine he keeps in a cupboard three feet from the jukebox. His oldies band plays every other Sunday- the concerts coincide with the meetings of his vintage car club. This store is the realization of a long childhood dream. What, pray tell, do they serve?
Okonomiyaki. Yep. Japanese egg pancakes. It is, to my knowledge, the only 1950's-themed squid and pork soba pancake establishment in existence. Pictures are forthcoming- no way to download them onto the work computer, and I've got to go back to get some more anyways.
I can't make this stuff up. If only I could...
pax
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yeah hey you haven't responded to a couple emails so I dunno if you have like a spam filter or something. My email is kikenkuyo@yahoo.co.jp and i'll be checkin it mainichi till saturday when we leave, and we'll have a laptop to check while in tokyo. We arrive the 5th of march at 5pm will maybe make it to tokyo from osaka by 10:30 om or so and will probably use that first night for the rabu hoteru since our hostel check in time is like 9 pm and we will miss it(the guy gave me the impression of the phone otherwise but i take no chances). Yeah this comment grows long so i'll just post and hope you get a look at it. hope to see you: jon aho and tonia.
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