Ashes

There isn't a logical thing to do with cat ashes. When our second cat died I used to keep her ashes in my sock drawer. Then another cat joined her. When many years later our third cat died, I really had to rethink the sock drawer scenario. Now, with Nose being gone, there is a neat stack of four boxes. And I can't decide what an appropriate resting place would be for them.

I have considered burying the ashes, but what if you move? And taking them to the ocean to join our fathers, but cats don't really like water.

A new option has appeared -- making the cats into diamonds.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Merry Holiday 2018

Praise

It was bound to happen. Sometimes I put a treasured possession  in the bathroom that is bathroom-related and a visitor misunderstands. Like when I used one of mrguy's matches from his prized Don The Beachcomber matchbook. He was not happy.

Today's victim was my bar of Praise soap, given to me by my doctor. It was clearly on display in the guest bath, but on the other hand the soap in the soap dish was down to a sliver. 

The mammoo, passing through town on her way to Easter, unwrapped the Praise and used it as...soap. Imagine! ;)

I could allow the bar to dry, find the wrapper and rewrap it? That is what the archivist in me might want to do. But I think I'm just going to go ahead and use it.

We move ahead.

The Baby. An Explanation

At a recent baby shower at the forklift factory, we made a gift card for the expectant mom. The card featured everyone in our department holding a big Kewpie doll. At the baby shower, someone suggested that the mom take home the baby doll, which was mine. Without thinking I blurted out "No!!! He lives in my bathroom!"

Everybody wanted to know why the baby lives in the bathroom.

In answer to their question, he anchors my display of little friends. That's what he does.

Here's our medicine cabinet with knick knack shelves. As you can see, my big baby lives on the bottom right. He doesn't quite fit, but he doesn't care, and his sweet little expression makes me happy every time I walk in the room.

I have a long history with Kewpies. I love the little guy stuck in the mah jongg tile in this part of the display below. I saw him taped to the cash register at a Family Mart in Kaohsiung and begged them to let me buy it. They gave it to me because they liked my hair.

The Kewpie doll in the Japanese lamp came from Osaka. The one in the little Yakult Swallows uniform came from a Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball game. The two who have corn and a tiger hat on their heads came from the deinstall of the forklift exhibition in Kaohsiung. The wind-up sumo wrestler was given to me at the Singapore deinstall by a colleague, and the big old Kewpie came from a craft store in the basement of Kyoto Tower. Mom found me Wig Lustre at a an estate sale "Don't you need this?" she asked.

Keeping on the baby theme, Big Baby! And some more sumo wrestlers that you put on your thumbs and wrestle with, and a light up Donald Duck that I bought for 5 Euro in Mantova in a palazzo after midnight, from a guy who was pretending to be deaf. I still regret not buying his flashlights, also.

Rounding out the display, a librarian action figure, an acupuncture point model of the ear

weird preparations, including the best psyllium husk label ever made, and Klutch denture adhesive.

On a non-Kewpie note, lack of shampoo in the bathroom made me stoop to removing the Dr. Liggett's shampoo bar from my display. My review of it as a product? Not so much, and it quickly went in the garbage. Ordinarily I'd feel a little guilty about cannibalizing the display, but it's the only item whose origin I can't recall.

A Dream

This is what happens when you fall back asleep on a Saturday morning after looking at the Craigslist estate sale listings: you dream that you are at an estate sale in Australia where you've found a circa 1950's American toy in the original box. 

The toy is a geodesic dome. 

Put the geodesic dome together, put your baby in it and immediately your baby and his baby friends have the ability to be an amazing reggae band (comprised of babies).

New Additions

I know what you're asking: where have I been? Why no news of Japan?

Before we went to Japan I maxed out my iPhoto, crashed my computer, and I have been sorting through photos. Moving ahead, I will learn to use iPhoto Manager. In the meantime I feel stranded amongst my photos with so much to say. It's like wanting to dance but being encumbered by a leg cast.

I'm going to start us off easy with an update on some collections. On our first Friday in Tokyo we went back to Ueno, to visit the denim stores that crowd under the train tracks of the Ueno station. Mrguy found the rare denim he was looking for, and I found a record shop with bins and bins of 45s outside of it. My idea of heaven. Also significantly less expensive than the denim.

I went through all of the bins, secretly hoping that I would find more Japanese Tobacco Singers, but knowing that I probably wouldn't.

Right away I started finding them. What a score! Then I also found 45s depicting men in kimonos with their hair dressed in a mage. Could these be singing sumo wrestlers? Too good to be true.

The owner of the store, probably in his late 60s, came out at one point to make sure that I understood that there were records inside those sleeves, not cds. I followed him inside to ask a few questions (by which I mean gesture and awkwardly mispronounce a few nouns):

Me (pointing) "Mage!"

Nice Man: "Hai".

Sumotori?"

Nice Man "Hai". As I brought out my notebook he told me the guy's name. Kitanofuji. Sounded familiar.

Me: "Yokozuna? Ozeki?"

Nice Man said he didn't know. He told me the other guys' names.

I went home with the sumotori and the smoking singers, and am quite happy.

I brought the 45s with me when we went to see friends in Yokohama. They filled in the gaps.

The smokers are Frank Nagai and Takashi Hoshigawa.

One of the sumotori was Kitanofuji. He reached the highest rank of sumo and is a stablemaster now.

The other, Masuiyama II, reached the second-highest rank in sumo and is also a stablemaster now.

The names of some of the songs (as translated by friends) are fabulous: "A Story at a Bar", "A Mutter of that Lady" and "The Chanko Song" (chanko is a stew eaten by sumo wrestlers).

Now that I've written this, I'm heading to the turntable to give these records a spin.