After Ken left last night I cooked up some dinner, then watched some YouTube and decided to call it a night. I practiced some, most of page 23, and it's hard to say if I'm practicing "harder" but getting through 80% of page 23 as opposed to lamely puffing through the whole thing like I was weeks ago.
I actually woke up before noon, and lay in bed until about 2. Did a lot of breathing exercises.
I had a bank appointment at 4, and left here at about 3:40. I steamed right on over to the bank and was right on time by which I mean just a few minutes into the 15-minute window the appointment provides. The reason to be a few minute in is to not have to wait outside, where there are so often crazies and bums. There was a bum passed out on the bus bench and a bum passed out in the next doorway over. And as I left, a crazy came through but didn't bother me. This is life in a world center of technology.
I went over to the Amazon place next and picked up a book I'd ordered, "Japanese For Dummies", and some bubble mailers. Then I went over to Nijiya and noticed the bentos were really wiped out. But they had one "School Lunch Bento" (my name not theirs) left so I grabbed that and a beer. I walked over to the Issei building and ate there, happy it's warm enough again but not *that* warm actually. The school lunch bento has, going left to right, pickled daikon, tomago, a sausage, two onigiri one with pickled seaweed and one with cooked salmon, some broccoli, and two pieces of chicken karaage. I imagine it being what you'd get at a Japanese high school for lunch.
As I walked over I noticed Ukulele Source is open again. That's nice to see. I also stopped at The Arsenal and looked around ... they have sumi-e stuff of course and, well, just all kinds of unexpected things. I didn't get anything though.
I went over to Kogura's and got two more pairs of chop sticks, telling the gal there I'd gotten away from using disposable ones but I think I'd gotten absent-minded and thrown one of my pairs away. I also picked up a brush marker to try a different kind, Kuratake brand. (Testing it out later, it's neat! I think the UNI is my favorite small one and the Kuratake is my favorite larger one.)
Then it was back to Nijiya for serious shopping, and I got a bunch of stuff. Blondie checked me out and I completely forgot to ask him how the kava had worked out for him. Darnit! Because I'm happy to give him the rest as, I think whatever kava does, it does in parallel with alcohol not as a replacement for it. It cost me $40 but what's money these days?
I got back here and was on time to pick up packages I'd packed and take them to FedEx and the post office, which I did. Then I shopped at H Mart, one interesting thing I got being a package of sauries which I'd been meaning to check out. They're a seasonal fish and this is about the last time to get them.
On the way back, I went by the old shop because Ken said Tom Price was there last night. Tom was there and we hung out, talking, for a while. It was cold as hell in the wind but it was fun for a while. He's living there all the time, it seems, because he's been "teleworking" for the past year. I told him I can coach him to be a busking trumpeter (he played trumpet in school) and I'll even go out with him and get him started. There's a retirement career there, playing outside various Whole Foods stores and such places, and I won't be doing it here because I'll be playing shakuhachi in Hawaii or even if I got back to trumpet it will be in Hawaii.
He seems to be at loose ends and depressed because of it. I don't know why I care so much about the guy except he's a neighbor, and now that we're not in conflict about the building he's a pretty nice guy. I get the sense that if I lost my situation here he'd at least let me camp out there. If I could scare up $500 a month he'd probably rent me the back half of the building and then I don't know what I'd do, probably start a business because that seems to happen when I get bored.
I told him about "publishing on demand" as Amazon does it now, where I've been ordering books and I'll look in the back and the book will have been printed and bound a few days before I got it. Publish-on-demand has been around for a few decades now but I think the way Amazon does it, it's really come into its own. And the reason I'm interested is, shakuhachi scores for nice easy beginner stuff are really hard to find, so I figure I'll have to learn to transcribe stuff, and it would be useful to publish a book of non-copyrighted, easy music for shakuhachi.
I'm really serious about getting him going on trumpet, though. I put all these years and work into trumpet, I told him, so I might as well pass it on. Anything I can do, I can teach. I can't teach a person to play like Wynton but I can get 'em going.
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