鯛焼き（taiyaki）

This afternoon I posted replies to friends who had kindly sent us warm greetings for the wedding. K took the chance to take a walk around the neighborhood. It has become a pleasure for us to promenade and explore unseen places near the house.

We stopped by a taiyaki shop and bought two fish for our afternoon tea, custard and red bean paste. In the snack shop, while we were checking menu, figuring out prices, and talking in English as if we were all alone, the young owner of the shop kindly interrupted us explaining to us in English! That was quite unexpected to me.
Immediately I was embarrassed. I hope he wasn't laughing at me in private when I was telling K how I was amazed at a gigantic shredding machine that was sitting in the shop. It is the kind of machine that people used to make shredded ice when I was little. Shredded ice with a scoop of syrup rocked! 'How nostalgic it is!' I said.

On our way home, K wondered why the shop owner opened his taiyaki shop on a main street with all possible expenses considered. In a rather cliched story that we made for him, the young shop owner was assigned the role of a young man with vision and ambition. He was a traveler wandering across the globe when he was younger, but his commitment to the spirit of taiyaki, a traditional Japanese sweets, brought him home. This shop is just the first step to his dream kingdom of taiyaki. (How Japanese drama it sounds!)
Anyway, we didn't really make it to end the story, but it gave me a good laugh. I laughed away the troubles that had haunted my brain space much earlier in the afternoon. How therapeutic this simple pleasure was then.

The taiyaki was not amazing, to be frank, but what came with it was.