Tiny Visitor

On Thursday of this week one little pumpkin came over to play. He pounded on my door at ten minutes to six, which worked well because I was tired and the six o'clock song was only ten minutes away. (A song plays all over the neighborhood on loudspeakers every evening at the same time telling kids when to go home for dinner. It's loud and I love it.)

He looked dirty and he smelled dirty (do all little boys smell of a mixture of dirt and sweat?), but he cuddled right up to my side. He brought a book to show me, so we sat down on the porch and went through each page. It was a Pokémon book (I know you think you know Pokémon, but you don't until you click here; first be amazed that the Japanese name is the terminally cute "Pocket Monsters" and then scroll down to the bottom - I have seen planes like that several times in Japan.) He went through about twenty characters with me, saying each one's name and then waiting while I repeated it. He got frustrated when I said the names wrong, and using his finger he would slowly "write" the word out in the air in front of us putting emphasis on each syllable. The kawaii thing is that he would write it in Japanese characters, of course, so that didn't help much (although I'm getting better). When the song started playing he snapped up his book and rode off on his bike yelling at the top of his lungs, "Ashita?" (Tomorrow?) Yes, tomorrow.