Ice cream while I type

My local internet-cafe just got better!

Not only can I relax in my massage chair, read weird porno comics and pick my nose in privacy (or even do all at once) but now I can have free ice-cream.

They have installed a Mr. Whippy machine, satisfying not only my desire for ice-cream but a long-held childhood dream of operating one of these machines. You pull down the big lever (glad no half-wit designer decided to modernize the thing with a touch-button) and out comes ice-cream like toothpaste from a tube - a thick white stripe of the stuff.

Round and round it goes, stacking higher and higher, becoming a beautiful helter-skelter of creamy perfection.

Actually, on the first attempt I incorrectly judged where the ice-cream was dispensed from so started my helter-skelter of creamy perfection on my wrist. The result was a kind of more traffic roundabout with roads heading off all over the place, than the turret of ice-cream I had been intending to craft.

And it was now dripping onto the floor. What followed was the predictable mess of a man trying to mop the floor with a tissue, and maintaining a licking-battle with his ice-cream cone (and wrist), hoping to stop anymore dropping on the floor. It reminded me of whenever I try and carry a big bundle of laundry, and I have to stop and pick up a dropped sock, only to drop another one whilst bending down, and so I bend to pick it up too, and then there goes some underwear, and so on. I've no doubt it was amusing for the shop staff - that's probably why they installed the machine.

Anyway having mastered the technique, I've now made three little ice-cream missions. And now I'm waiting for my Nan-ban chicken take-out to be delivered (direct to my massage-chair).

It has been a stressful day.

I spent two hours waiting for my Japanese driving lisence (which is simple to get if you have the good sense to come from a country that drives on the same civilised side of the road as Japan), only to be told my foreigner-card was out of date. The gruff man behind the counter was quite alarmed.

"Your foreigner-card is out-of-date."

"Oh I see. Does that mean I can't get my driving lisence today?"

"It's out-of-date!" He waved the card vigorously in the air so I could make out the relevant numbers more clearly.

"Oh that's bad."

"Dame da yo!" Dame (pronounced "da-meh") is a unique little Japanese word that means forbidden, out-of-line or just plain broken. The first time I heard it was when one of the porters at the dormitory kicked the punctured tyre on my bike.

The man looked at me like I was a punctured tyre. "Dame!"

It turned out that the government could arrest me for just failing to have my card about my person. What about having an out-of-date card? "Dame, dame, dame..."

Ahh. The government would get me. Where could I go to get a new card?

"The local-government office" he said.

So off I set for the government office, looking right and left for fear of being arrested by the government.

Anyway, it was all a big waste of time on my last day of holiday, so I'm going to enjoy my Mr Whippy machine - as many times as I like.

Chie enjoys Mr. Whippy too.

PS Chie emailed yesterday regarding the "Pacific Love Letters".

Yesterday the Blog was seen.
I feel like crawling under the floor.

Shame.

I will try hard in English.

Chie

Obviously I realize publishing this is not the way to sooth the wounds, but what a sentence: "crawl under the floor"! Forget wanting to "hide under the table", crawling beneath the floor is far more vivid. If you like the English language, and like seeing "interesting" things done to it, forget James Joyce or Ginsburg, come live in Japan.