Buddhist | Masako and Spam Musubi

Dad’s eyes got a teensy-weensy bit watery again today.

Perhaps its becoming a routine.

________________________________

Went to see Dad this morning. Took him his “bentou”, or Japanese lunch to-go, as a change of pace. They only serve America cuisine there.

Not that he complains. He doesn’t. But all the servers there know he WON’T eat fish. He makes sure of that.

Also took him “yokan”, “senbei”, “manjyuu”, and Morinaga caramel (his favorite from decades ago)… Oh. And “anpan”. Gotta feed his sweet tooth. Make him happy is all that matters now.

While he asked how “Sue-boh” is as usual (his favorite brother who was KIA), he – by coincidence – talked about how he broke his elbow again. 😉

But this time, I had the pictures I had taken last month with me! Blew his mind. He “kinda” remembered my son and I went to Japan, but he couldn’t comprehend how I got those pictures. Oh well. Anyways, the most important thing was that yes, that was the large stone he jumped from…but he asked, “Where’s the benjo? There was a benjo there behind the tree.” A “benjo” is kind of like an Japanese-style outhouse. 🙂 And that definitely was the (remnants of the) branch.

You should have seen his boyish smile.

I took along what vintage pages I dared to from Grandmother Kono’s album today. I was concerned as they were so fragile… but Dad handled them gingerly.

King Street — He said there was a butcher shop in the brick building in the background. That brick building at King and Maynard is still standing.

He particularly liked the photo of him, Mieko and Suetaro… He had a nice smile. I wonder what was going through his thoughts then but I wasn’t going to interrupt.