bon odori
The neighbourhood association had its bon odori tonight in the little park behind the Inari shrine, the one with two stone foxes wearing red bibs.
Hoshino-san lent me a yukata. Navy, with white bellflowers, from "before", which is all she said about it. She tied the obi on me in her genkan in about forty seconds and slapped my back when it was done.
A wooden tower in the middle of the park, lanterns on strings, a drummer who looked about fifteen, the same four songs on a loop. You dance in a circle around the tower and copy the person in front. The person in front of me was a man of eighty in a towel headband who never once made a mistake.
Yakisoba from the association tent, 300 yen. Beer, 200.
Then Hoshino-san took me by the elbow to a woman in a tent with a cash box, Murata-san, who is in charge of the garbage station for our whole block. "This is 202," Hoshino-san said. "She sorts properly now."
Murata-san said, "Ah. The PET bottle." Everyone at the tent laughed, me too.
We walked back slowly. At the door of 101 Hoshino-san said okaerinasai, welcome home, to the dark building, the way you'd say it to a person, and then laughed at herself and said she always does that.