One of the old ladies that lives in my neighborhood, Ohori-san, has been nice enough to give us a loaf of bread now and then. Like many older people in Japan she has her groceries delivered to her home since she isn’t able to get around well. She does like to chat with me in a 90% Japanese/10% English mix and a while back she gave us a big loaf of bread to say thanks for chatting with her.
This is a serious loaf of bread, too. It comes from one of the department stores in Takarazuka, and probably costs her $10 a loaf. They are really good, and we ended up cutting the first loaf into slices and then freezing it, pulling out pieces when we wanted to make toast or sandwiches. There’s no way we could get through the whole loaf without freezing it.
A couple of weeks back she dropped by and gave us another loaf of bread, and we responded by dropping off some homemade Japanese sweets. Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from her saying that her grocery order came in, and she’s headed my way with some more bread. I told her we hadn’t finished the last loaf yet, and she said, “So you don’t like the bread?” Oh, great. Sure, we like it, but it appears now she is ordering a loaf of bread for us every time she orders groceries.
I went over and picked up the bread before she could shuffle all the way over to our house, and she was very happy that I accepted the bread. There’s really not much we can do but give her a return present, and hope she doesn’t keep up with the bread. It’s one of those vicious present cycles that are easy to get caught up in living in Japan. Even Japanese people have these kinds of social problems, and I’m really at a disadvantage because of the different social customs that I am used to as well as my language disadvantage.
Still, the bread IS tasty.
