Exhibition of Sogenkai: A Guest Post by Flat Stanley

I was still giggling about our taxi ride when we entered the big brick building across from the train station. "The Exhibition of Sogenkai is on the third floor," Aunt Kathy proclaimed as she made a beeline for the elevator. We followed an elderly lady into the first elevator that arrived. "Why didn't those five Japanese men get on the elevator with us, Aunt Kathy?" "Maybe because we got on an elevator that's going down rather than up," Aunt Kathy whispered as we watched the elderly lady slowly exit on the basement level. We smiled sheepishly at those five Japanese men, now chuckling politely, when we picked them up on our way back past the first floor.

Whoa! The gallery lobby was teeming with Japanese people when we exited the elevator. Aunt Kathy stuck out like a cherry in a can of fruit cocktail which probably explains why an official-looking lady hustled over to greet us. "Takako?" Aunt Kathy carefully enunciated each syllable. The lady led us to a room off to the right of the foyer and pointed to Takako's painting just as a man began addressing the foyer horde in a loud, professorial tone of voice.

We admired Takako's painting for a few seconds and then Aunt Kathy spotted her friends at the far end of the gallery, across that foyer crammed with 50 people paying rapt attention to the art professor. We saw the official-looking lady tap Takako on the arm and gesture in our direction. We watched Takako approach us. We cringed as she scurried between the lecturer and his audience. Takako hugged Aunt Kathy then tugged her toward the far end of the gallery.

Aunt Kathy looked so funny crossing that foyer. She must have bowed at least 15 times before she reached the center of the room and then she just scuttled the rest of the way with her head bent to her knees like a nonagenarian with extreme osteoporosis. Mary Beth and Mimi were laughing hysterically when Takako left us with them.

Aunt Kathy saw a bench and decided to sit down for a few minutes to recover her dignity. A man wearing a Burberry scarf tapped Aunt Kathy on the arm, gestured at the paintings on the walls around us, then opened his program, raised one eyebrow until it looked like a question mark, and rattled off a string of words. "I don't have the faintest idea what you're saying," Aunt Kathy replied politely.

After the man repeated this exercise three times, Mimi took a crack at it. "He thinks you are an artist and wants to know which paintings are yours." Aunt Kathy reprised her careful pronunciation of "Takako" and the man found Takako's name in his program while I made a mental note: definitely get on Mimi's team if anyone proposes a game of Charades.

"Psst! Aunt Kathy! Will you please take my picture with that nice man and his wife?" The thing is -- and this is totally unfair to Kristen -- I suspect that couple had the distinct impression Aunt Kathy created me. They simply could not believe she is not an artist. "Do I have some sort of crazy Van Gogh glint in my eye?" Ummm, no, but you are starting to resemble Grandma Moses . . .

As you can see, Takako's painting is very lovely, quite green, and positively enormous. We admired it from every possible angle until Mimi's stomach growled a farewell to Takako and we wandered down the street to an Indian restaurant where the waiters were all wearing baggy silk pants and embroidered jackets.

Aunt Kathy was so busy admiring the waiters' clothes and shoveling naan in her mouth that she forgot to order lunch for me but she made up for this oversight by taking me to a bakery on our way back to the train station. Since 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, she bought me this tiger pastry. It looks like a cinnamon roll, doesn't it? Surprise! That dark stuff isn't cinnamon, it's chocolate. Yum.

In summary, riding around the block in a taxicab was a lot of fun and I liked seeing Takako's painting and meeting Aunt Kathy's friends and the man with the Burberry scarf and his cheerful wife, but the best part of the day for me was when Aunt Kathy encouraged me to play with my food. Grrrrrrrrr!