Use a Wire and Eat a Cream Puff . . . or Three

You might think I'm a crafty lady -- the type who whips up a few quilt squares before breakfast and spends her evenings bent over the stove, stirring wood pulp into paper for one-of-a-kind scrapbook pages littered with charming stamped designs and painstaking calligraphy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which is:  I can't even pronounce the name of the most popular craft store in this part of Japan, let alone do anything useful with most of its products.

Background
Ishii was practicing her English while helping me untangle a rat's nest of yarn a couple weeks back -- this was before I scored the wooden balls in Asakusabashi -- when my glance happened to fall on the kimekome ball I brought home from Tadodai House. ("Glance happened to fall" is my euphemism for what other English language "teachers" here call "lesson plans".)

"Where can I buy one of those two-headed knife tools to finish this second ball? Do they have them at Yuzawaya?" I thought it was a fairly simple question, really, but I'll be the first to admit my spoken sentences tend to be less complete than my written ones. Nouns, verbs, and punctuation marks appear in random order, assuming they appear at all.

Ishii reached across the yarn clump on her lap to pick up a little bundle of gold cord from the coffee table. "This is what you use to cover the seams," she replied. In careful and perfect English.

"I know THAT. But what about the knife tool? Yuzawaya?"

"No. This cord." She gave the little bundle of gold cord a gentle shake, like a patient young mother trying to interest a baby in a rattle or like my brother trying to bribe Mel with a doggie treat. Her face was tense with concentration.

We were down to nouns.

"Knife. Yoo-zah-why-yuh? Kamioooooooka?"

Her face muscles relaxed a bit. "Yoo-zah-why-yuh store?"  I nodded.

"Yes, I think they sell the knives at the Yuzawaya store in Kamiooka. I thought you wondered if you could 'use a wire' in place of the gold cord."

Placing equal stress on all syllables is particularly difficult for people prone to melodramatic inflection. Apparently.

The Field Trip

The Oakleaf knitters meet at my house most Monday mornings.  Cheryl coordinates both the Oakleaf knitters and the base knitting group.  I said, "Hey, Cheryl, let's take the knitters on a field trip to Yuzawaya in Kamiooka some Monday.  We can have lunch and try to find the cream puff shop."

About a dozen of us set off for Kamiooka last Monday morning.  About half were mainly interested in having lunch, five never turn down a chance to buy fabric and/or yarn, and one was looking for a knife tool she might someday use to apply fabric to kimekome balls.

All, it turned out, were interested in tracking down the cream puff shop.  They didn't care that I couldn't quite remember where the shop is located.  There's a lot to be said for friends who will follow you anywhere. 

Regrettably, I was too embarrassed to pull out my camera and snap a picture of the long line of gaijin women following me single-file around the perimeter of the Keikyu department store basement.  (The last time I saw such optimistic faces lined up like that was in the home movie my dad took as we filed down the stairs in age order on Christmas morning circa 1961.  It dawns on me that he must have been feeling a lot of pressure to please on that and other Christmas mornings.  Excuse me while I wallow in a puddle of belated empathy.)

How much pressure was I under?  Enough to ask three clerks for directions.  Yes, brothers and sis, you read that correctly:  I approached three perfect strangers and said "Beard Papa's?" in the most questioning and hopeful tone of voice I could muster.  (See 'melodramatic inflection', above.)  The third clerk actually understood English and was able to point us in the right direction.

Beard Papa's is located between the tobacco shop and department store entrance on the ground floor of the train station, just outside the turnstiles. So now you know and won't have to talk to strangers.

Beard Papa's offered five varieties of cream puff the day we visited:

1. Regular crust, custard filling.
2. Crust studded with brown sugar, custard filling.
3. Crunchy donut crust, custard filling.
4. Regular crust, chestnut filling.
5. Crust studded with brown sugar, chestnut filling.

Not sure I would like the chestnut filling, I settled for one each of the first three options, kicked myself for missing the pumpkin filling offered in October, and vowed to return in December to slake my flavor-of-the-month curiousity.

As I watched the clerks stuff cream puff after cream puff into boxes and sacks for my friends, the thought crossed my mind that Beard Papa's might want to offer me some sort of profit-sharing deal. This, alas, is what comes from cramming five and a half seasons of "The Sopranos" into eight weekends. Shame on me.

Lots of Japanese food service workers wear floor-length aprons. I hope they aren't planning to discard all those puff shell fragments on the tray in the right foreground. Thoughts like that make it hard for me to sleep at night.

(That clicking sound you hear is my sister desperately searching for bargain flights to Japan.)