Pack Up All Your Cares and Woes, Head On Up To Tokyo

Sometime between now and Tuesday I need to find a recipe for Seafood Jambalaya and make enough to feed 40 people. Oh, and I vaguely recall volunteering to make mass quantities of gumbo and salad as well. Heh, heh.

Fortunately the book I was reading last night, which should have been a cookbook but was not, offered a new technique for dealing with worries: visualize a matchbox, slide it open, tuck your worries inside, and then slide it shut. Imagining a matchbox was a snap because I happened to snag several at the Ramen Museum just last month. Do I lead a serendipitous life or what?

With my worries safely nestled inside a JFK matchbox, I set off for the Tokyo Dome this morning with Kim, Sherri, and a fully charged cell phone which enabled us to hook up with Jane, Valerie, Hiroko, and Kasayo at the indigo exhibit where we watched an elderly gentleman swish fabric in a kettle of blue (presumably indigo) dye.

We bought bento box lunches -- mine, of course, was light on vegetables and heavy on dumplings and rice -- and then we admired the fabulous quilts and wandered through dozens of stalls where vendors were hawking fabric, notions, quilting kits, and scores of other items not remotely related to quilting.

Those vendors saw me coming. Once I solve the Jambalaya/Gumbo problem, and finish knitting the ribbed scarf Stanley started, and work my way through Ulysses, I will hand Matt the five quilt kits I lugged home from Tokyo today and see if I can bribe him into translating the directions into a language I can comprehend.

Let's hope he won't have left for college by then. Hey! That would be a perfect worry for the Che Guevara matchbox!

South Bend Meets Tokyo

This is what Japan has to say about the upcoming contest between Notre Dame Football Legends and the Japan National Team:
The Notre Dame Japan Bowl 2009 is the biggest American Football event to take place in Japan. Never have such big names come to Japan to play against the Japanese national team for the purpose of American Football Globalization. Japan is the perfect place to start a global American Football movement and that is why Notre Dame Legends such as Lou Holtz and Tim Brown are coming to the Land of the Rising Sun to celebrate their 75th anniversary. The Notre Dame Japan Bowl will pit a Notre Dame team full of ex-NFL players as well as former All-Americans, against a Japanese National Team who took the U.S.A national team down to the wire in the American Football World Cup 2007.

Here's the kicker, unlike any other exhibition here in Tokyo, this will be a matchup full of global implications. Now that Japan has proven that they can play with the big boys, Notre Dame Legends will not be pulling any punches. This is the kind of gridiron battle that Japan has been lacking and this may be the epic battle to solidify Japan as an Elite American Football Country. Will Notre Dame put an over-achieving Japanese Team back in their place? Or will Japan prove all the naysayers wrong and force America to bring over an even tougher team?

You can be darn sure I'll be scanning the Tokyo Dome grounds for UND cell phone charms.