25C and blooming cherry trees on the first week of November - are you for real, climate??
Turns out that our local big park has a massive rentable-plots BBQ area - book a time-and-space slot, get a number on a stick, arrive early in the morning to claim your preferred spot with the stick and plenty of blue plastic sheets, have your couple of hours of event, clean up every scrap, return number and pay up.
I've never even SEEN so much awesome wagyu, not to mention eaten it. For a totally reasonable price to boot. Some other good/interesting food too, but... I mean, the world's higest rated beef, straight from a charcoal grill, cooked by a semi-professional chef!
Vinegar-marinated raw onions and cucumbers were, despite all common sense, really good - need to try to make it for sure. So were salty potato chips with chocolate. But I'd rather leave the Indian-origin dish containing whole cardamon and anise seeds, cloves, bone splinters and a million other, actually edible things, to someone else.
Did not expect someone to whip out a canteen of water, gas burner, freshly ground coffee, kettle, paper filters and a fold-out metal funnel and start making hot coffee under the table, but woah, it did smell nice. Someone had also brought a made-that-morning pumpkin pudding, guess all the Halloween leftovers had to go somewhere. Bit of a flop, haha, that one, though, I thought it too bitter, D, too fatty.
Having every other person present be a tennisomaniac puts somewhat of a restraint on the conversation topics. But it feels like despite a loooong time of not actually using the language, my Japanese ability has improved a bit. At least the understanding, if not the speaking part. And at least for the middle part, where brain had sort of gotten into gear, but not exhausted... yet.
Murder-wasps apparently understand Estonian, listen to what I tell them to do, and go pester some other group of picnickers (had to google the spelling of this) for the rest of the event. Hint: flapping hands at them really doesn't do a thing except potentially piss them off. Neither does spraying aerosol poison towards the completely innocent hawk moths that happen to be passing by (because you cannot tell one insanely different bug from the other, I presume). The trigger-happy people (from another group, luckily) did succeed in spraying said poison all over themselves, their friends, things and food, though. Oh well, natural selection.
Time behaved funnily - first 1.5 hours took aaaages, the rest disappeared in a blink, and suddenly everyone was jumping up cleaning and packing stuff. And ohhh boy, that was a moment I wish I'd been paying more attention, because apparently one (or two) of the Japanese guys just upped and threw away all of the still uneaten food from the table. Neither us nor the organiser, originally from Fiji, could believe our eyes, and I suspect some of the more sensible Japanese couldn't either. The actual fuck, there is actual wagyu and grilled chicken left on the trays and you throw it into a trashbin??? No, really, days later, I still can't get over this... Anyone who has EVER been under the misconception that the Japanese culture is not wasteful - here you go then...
After the clean-up started, time slowed down again, though, and it took ages to finally get out of the park, because a million rounds of standing around, thanking eachother, clapping, preceeded by practicing clapping, speeches, packing the car, photography (an undertaking shared with the neighboring group of veryveryvery drunk people on their highschool reunion or sth), bowing etc. just do not end at that kind of event in this country. Consider yourself warned.
Cheers,
Hedi
