A Nice Enough Setting

Columbus Day, certainly not on the calendar in Beijing.  Monday’s expectations piled up as they normally do.  But here, the younger one had the day off. She must have hinted to her mother that she wanted to out for lunch.  And when my wife ran it by me, I instinctively squashed it.  “I’m working.  You go.”  She fed the question back to my daughter as a question: “So, you want to go to a Japanese place for lunch?”  She took that as rejection: “Fine.  Forget it.” 

And though her frustration and door slamming were directed at my wife, this was all my fault.  I considered her, sitting here at home, stuck in her room.  Our town seems to have two Japanese places.  I haven’t been to the one called Hokaido.  We could try there. I walked up and tried to walk her back from her misplaced frustration at her mom and suggested this Northern Ocean Island restaurant. 

It’s a nice enough setting a block back from Main Street, and after circling around the tight one-way passages, once and then twice I found some parking and we walked over and through the wooden door.  The decorum was pleasant enough, as faux-Japanese goes.  I listened to the woman who seated us accent, when she said: “Table for three?”  That’s not the way Japanese pronounce English.  I heard the chatter by the two men behind the sushi bar.  That’s not Japanese.  And it isn’t any dialect of Chinese I recognize either.  My wife asked.  “I think that’s Tagalog.” 

The tuna, avocado bowl sounded harmless enough, but it wasn’t anything special.  My wife ordered Udon.  Good luck with that.  Sure, enough she was disappointed.  She ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio.  You’ll need even better luck with that.  “It’s sweet.”  And it sat there un-drunk.   The two pieces of Aji sushi I tried were old and tired.  The people were pleasant enough and I was glad to be in town with my family, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to this place.  No food exports itself less convincingly than the food of Japan.

Later, my step dad was over.  He’s a biologist and he can name trees.  I was busy making dinner.  But he walked around our property with my wife picking up leaves from the trees we couldn’t identify.  He made a big deal about the maple off our porch to the right which was in full fall flame.  I’d just assumed it was a “maple” but he insisted it wasn’t just any sugar maple. (Turns out, it’s a “Striped Maple.”)  My wife lead him to one tree with large leaves that look as though they were all exaggerated spades from a deck of cards.  He didn’t know that one but now that he had the leaf, he’d look it up for us and soon we’d know. 

Monday 10/14/19