bizarrely wonderful day

It all began when i saw a sign for a japanese homestyle cooking class for 500 yen. I knew that this class was but one of the many possible landmarks on the road that we call destiny. Naturally, i decided to sign up, but my decision was not anticipated by my procrastination, and i came too late. I was told that the class was full, and my heart sank deep within my chest. I howled aloud, but there were no sympathetic ears. So i emailed the woman in charge and she told me that there was nothing they could do--the class was indeed full. But perceverance gets the best of old fools like me, and i biked my way down to the community center. Needless to say, i charmed my way in, using a golden chain watch, elementary hypnosis, and masterfully executed gaijin ignorance. The class was excellent, and the teachers were so accomodating that they even let me prepare my own food when the recipe was not vegetarian, mainly because of stock reasons that were easily altered, just so i could eat with them. We cooked up: sauteed burdock root with carrot and green pepper, miso soup with kombu stock (for me) and wakame and shitake mushroom, sweet potatoes with rice and black sesame, and last but certainly not least, the infamous "toufu steeki". My toufu steeki was drenched in a mushroom sauce using three different mushrooms--enoki (long and skinny with small white caps), bunashimeji (hearty white stems with brown caps), and shitake. The lunch was fabulous, and we ate persimmon for dessert, a delicately sweet fruit i had not previously enjoyed.
Aferwards, i biked around the park a bit and chatted with two girls from the class who i happened to find there. Some young boys were fishing in a green pond below thick branches covered in thin shoot-like epiphytes. There is a small mountain in the middle of the park, and the last time i was walking up its stone steps with matt we found some land crabs that surprised us with their size and the brilliance of their colors.
As i biked home after posting an ad for my bike (its too small and i want something a bit faster and not built for dwarves), i passed the bridge and heard, of all things, bluegrass. I walked around the stage and found a bluegrass band composed solely of Japanese men, one of them singing in twangy, cracked English. There were four banjo players, two mandolinists, two guys on bass, and two gee-tar players. I found a British girl i knew sitting down and i sat with her and expressed my astonishment, whereupon she related hers, and we both agreed on our jubilation. Her boyfriend soon joined us, and i learned that he is a mandolin player, and is heavily into bluegrass. I must say i never liked bluegrass before, but after hearing it in a foreign country, let alone in japanese (yes, some songs were in japanese), it triggered something inside me, that part of me that longs to embrace his roots (well, both as an american and a jew), and i felt comforted hearing the music, much like, i assume, a japanese person would feel if they randomly heard a live performance of traditional japanese music. So now i have a new and budding interest in bluegrass, all thanks to these musicians carving out yet another foreign genre into the already crowded japanese music interest. The girl's boyfriend said he would burn me some music, and i reminded him that i like the hardcore stuff, ie. scratchy voices and barnyard-quality recording. I asked him if he knew Will Oldham, but he didn't. He is my new musical deity.
over and out