Sachi and I decided to take a walk today, one of those walks where you don’t know exactly where you’re going to go, and the point is to see what’s along the way rather than what’s at the end of the road. So we kind of chose a direction and started walking, choosing our turns as we went.

One place we ended up was discovering a great little supermarket we never imagined existed before, but there it was–great produce, low prices, a really great place, and we never would have found it if we hadn’t gone “bura bura,” which in Japanese means to wander along without direction.

We kept going until we got, quite unintentionally, to Itabashi Station, or near to it, and wandered into a “shotengai no matsuri,” or a street fair. Great smells there–yakitori cooking, along with all manner of foods common to such venues in Japan. One place I asked Sachi we stop at was the kaki-gori, or shaved ice stand. It is often loosely translated as a “snow cone” stand, but these are not snow cones. It’s in a dish, and it’s finely shaved ice, very different from crushed ice. This stuff melts in your mouth, it’s good.

The guy dishing it out at the end there was a sweet old guy who eagerly wanted to speak English and invited us to come back on August 9, when they have their second and last street fair of the year. Don’t know if we’ll make it back, but I can think of worse places to go.

Sachi and I got back home soon before sunset, and in time to be disappointed by our view of the Sumida-gawa fireworks–mostly because they were drowned out by the haze of the day. But it was a nice day nonetheless.