Rainy Days and Mondays

We had another cool rainy day yesterday, making it feel more like fall.  It wasn’t a hard rain, like the day before, but it was a consistent rain.  As a result, I didn’t do laundry or go anywhere again. 

In the morning, my neighbors came over for a visit and a cup of tea.  The last two weekends the election speaker cars have been loud and very annoying all the days from early morning until late at night.  Okuda San told me it wasn’t the rain that had stopped the election speaker cars that have been driving us nuts.  The election was held on Sunday.  I’m glad it’s over!  Tatsuma is always very curious about all the “stuff” we have and he loves climbing on all our chairs. Our apartment is physically like theirs but very different as far as contents.  Two days of rain means two days of not riding the Mickey-mobile, so they probably just wanted to get out of the house for a little while without going out in the rain. She has a wrist injury that is preventing her from stitching and thinks it might be from lifting her son who now weighs ten kilos.  We made plans to go to two different local festivals together this weekend. You’d think the town would spread the festivals out instead of having two in one weekend, but maybe it’s because summer is almost over.  They brought me some Japanese cake and I gave them some cherry tomatoes. 

In the afternoon, three elderly men came with two buckets full of towel bits and cleaning supplies to clean out my drains. I saw them out the window over the weekend going to the other side of the apartment building, but had no idea what they were doing.

 

Have you ever heard of this happening? Maybe it's a routine maintenance thing in Japan. They worked slowly and were in my apartment over an hour.  They poured some crystals that foamed up down the drains and with toothbrushes scrubbed the bath, the toothbrushing sink, the washing machine drain and the kitchen sink.  They also looked under the sinks, I guess looking for leaks. I was glad I didn’t have a sink full of dirty dishes.  If they had come a few weeks ago, Ted wouldn’t have had to be the plumber. They seemed to be about as curious as Tatsuma about all our stuff. I had to demonstrate how our sponge mop thing works. When you pull on a lever the sponge part folds in half and squeezes out the water.  They all liked it.

Even with all these visitors, I was able to do a little more stitching on the Sun Dragon’s wing.