son of soy

Mari watches the sunset from our upstairs window.
Among the rooftops is the laundry shed for Kokoro no Oshibori, roughly, “Handtowels of the Heart.” If you eat in a restaurant in Kyoto’s Sakyou-ku district, maybe your oshibori, the hot or cold hand towels you get at the table, are washed and dried there. Sometimes we can hear the ka-chunk ka-chunk of the machines late into the night. The company name is actually Tsukasa, but kokoro no oshibori, written on their service vans, always makes me smile.

Looking back:

From the summer memories series: life in Morton, Washington. Dad sits in his favorite chair munching peanuts, watching a History Channel program about tanks on satellite TV. Meanwhile, outside, meat grills on the Weber while a fawn looks on.