2018年5月11日金曜日 - 
Tony： My Golden Week
This year my
family didn't make any travel plans for Golden Week. We decided to stay in
Kansai, try to find some local things to do, clean the house, and maybe sell a
few things on Mercari. Living in Osaka means there is no shortage of things to do, but we didn't even want
to catch a train, so for a bit of adventure we chose to walk from one end of our local shopping street to the other for the first time in years.
It took no time at all to find something
new. There was a new pizza restaurant with a karate dojo on the second
floor. Previously a florist had been in that building. The
pizza shop owner was out front, and after we introduced ourselves he told us that he'd been living in
New York for the last five years, fell in love with the pizza there, and now that he was back in Japan all he could think
about was recreating the pizza that he'd fallen in love with. We went back a day later and ate awesome
pizza!
Past the pizza shop things looked the
same. A stationary shop with faded advertisements, a coffee shop with a picture of Arnold Shwarzenegger
in the window, an off-brand 100-yen shop, a bike shop, a Chinese restaurant, a senbei
shop, a korokke shop, a candy shop, a takoyaki stand, a socks
shop. Really normal stuff for a local shopping street. But, something seemed
missing.
It was my son who noticed. Toyota's Karaage
was gone! I'd been buying fried chicken from Toyota-San for the past 17 years!
His shop was gone and nothing had replaced it. The steel shutters were down, and
there was no notice on the door. The shop next door sold tofu, and the old guy
who ran it was out front, recognized us, and waved us over.
“What happened to Toyota-San?” I asked.
“He retired,” said the old guy, with a
short, sharp wave of his hand. He looked irritated.
“That seems kind of early,” I said. “He
wasn't even sixty yet, was he?”
The tofu seller eyes flashed and his lips
pressed thin.
“Early? Yes it was early! I'm seventy-one
and here I am working everyday and Toyota-San retires before he's even sixty. Some peoples' luck! He won the damn lottery!”
We talked a little longer, I bought some
tofu, and then we went home.
Congratulations to Toyota-San, but I'm
going to miss his karaage. He was a master.
Shortage：不足
one end of ～ to the other：～の端から端まで
Previously：以前
out front：店頭に立っている
now that：今や～なので
faded：色あせた
replaced：替えられる
Some peoples' luck! ：ラッキーな人もいるものだ！
lottery：宝くじなどのくじ
miss：食べたくなる