today my mom, i, and twiddle thumbs went to little tokyo. at first we went to check out this thing at the aratani theatre for parents' day. parents' day is apparently a national thing i had never heard of and this was the nikkei (japanese-american) version of it. we listened to a select few children and adults give speeches in japanese, though one girl gave her speech in english. all you have to do is talk about parent appreciation. the little kids were funny because the general consensus from their speeches were that moms are nice and dads are mean. i heard of this event from a japanese solicitor who stopped by my workplace. i immediately noticed her struggle with english and told her in japanese that she could give speak in japanese if she wished. of course, people are always surprised when i bust out the japanese. it's like a secret weapon or something. this lady thought i should compete and give a speech. uh, i don't think so. giving me a microphone and an audience is never a good idea!

after the speeches were over, there were some entertainment followed by an intermission. we left during the intermission. we only missed a few entertainers and the awarding of the prizes for the best speech and some other art contest they had. we ate at a restaurant we don't usually go to but i could swear i went there with friends years ago. i had a tofu-katsu with miso sauce. i never realized there are restaurants that serve tofu-katsu! damn that sauce was good. soshite mise de chotto uro uro shita. (then we browsed at some stores.) that just sounds better in japanese! there were some nice furniture pieces and dishes. in particular at waraku, whose items are very expensive, twiddle thumbs and i had to tear ourselves away from that stuff! it really made me want to decorate a room japanese style in my dream home or even the entire home. it was hard to look at these things because we need to live in our own place again! then we bought some imagawayaki and cruised the okinawa store.