Akiko invited me to have 手巻寿司 party (temaki sushi - sushi that you make yourself by putting 酢飯 (sumeshi - vinegared rice), ねた (neta - topping for sushi), and 山葵 (wasabi - Japanese horseradish paste) on 海苔 (nori - dried seaweeds), rolled it with your hand, and dip it into 醤油 (syouyu - Japanese soy-souce) before you eat it). When I came to her place, Kedama - her cat, came to me and started sniffing at me. She's kind of following me around that Akiko gazed at me as if there's something wrong with me.
"You must be secreting cat's pheromone."
"What?"
"Look at Kedama. I never saw her kept on sniffing on someone the way she sniff on you now. Even when my sister came here, she just ignored her."
I was started to think that perhaps the charm also works on cats :-) (if you wondering what's the charm that I mean, I wrote about it in this blog. But of course it's just a joke :-) )
"May be she just smelled the scent of one of my cats. You know, I used to kept cats as pet."
"You kept cats here in Japan?"
"No, it was when I was still in Indonesia..."
Akiko said nothing, but from the look in her eyes it looked like she said, "So you trying to tell me that you didn't take shower all of these years that the smell still there?" :-)
Anyway, the sushi was great, and Kedama kept on coming to me. Well, this time maybe she came because I had fish in my hand... :-)
More on Kedama, Akiko got her from her friend, which found several kittens being dumped by their owner. It's hard (and expensive) to keep pets in Japan, but I don't think that it is civilized to dump kittens (or other animal babies), who basically still don't have the ability to survive on their own. It's good for Kedama that finally there's someone that willing to keep her as a pet. And even though Akiko often complained about her (specially when Kedama started to hone her claw on any object that she finds, or when she's shedding that all of the room seems to be covered by her fur :-) ), Akiko really cares about her, and I think that means a lot more than all of her complains :-).
Since I let Kedama to sit on my lap, it was the first time in 10 years or so that my clothes dusted by cat's fur. Anyway, I don't care at all. She reminded me of all of my cats, and come to think of it, I think I miss them all...
