Lost in Sonoda

Uta and I ventured out today in search of a baseball bat and got lost. Not really lost mind you, just sort of mixed up. I know the town well enough, I thought, after all we lived here for six months and have visited countless times. But this year Baba and Jiji moved to a new apartment, so the routes we take to and from the stores are different. On the way to the shopping plaza we went the long way round in order to stop by the park, but returning home we tried to go direct. Going direct entails zig-zagging through a maze of skinny unmarked streets. We were doing really well to a point and then suddenly everything looked unfamiliar. It didn't take too much back tracking to set things right, but it was a funny feeling to say the least.

It is the morning of day four, I think. It is easy for me to lose track of time here. So far we have been doing a lot of nothing in an attempt to align ourselves with daily life, trying simply to sleep at the right times, eat at normal intervals. The only time Uta is hungry is first thing in the morning when he wakes up, which for him at the moment means rising with the crows at 4:30. (The crows wake me up too. Their voices are shockingly deep and gruff. My first thought is always that some old man has lost his mind and is cawing out on the street.) Uta quickly fills up on fruit, bread and milk and then doesn't eat for the remainder of the day. (The milk by the way has been given (by Uta) the "Best Milk in the World" award. It is delivered every morning to a small cooler box next to the mailbox outside the front door. It comes in individual sized glass bottles and tastes creamy and sweet.) Not eating dinner is paining Baba to no end. She asks him countless times throughout the day "Will you eat? What will you eat? Will you eat this? Will you eat that? Are you ok? Are you tired? Are you hungry? Please eat." Uta never ever reponds.