Chasing Kanji - 感情を追って

An American's travel traumas
アメリカ人の旅行の外傷

'Ey Mon  

I suppose the lack of posts lately is due to a lack of motivation to find something to say that perhaps you’d like to read. Lots of interesting things have occurred, but maybe nothing that’s super interesting for the blogging we usually try to do. That being said, I’ll give you a little update, and you can decide for yourself.

In August we had our 8th wedding anniversary. Christopher asked me to choose what I wanted to do. In the past, we’d gone out to “special occasion” type restaurants for a nice dinner. But I really just wanted to do an activity that I’d never done before. So I chose for us to go to a Jamaican restaurant in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Coney Island is a neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn that’s on the water and has a Midway and small amusement park along with a stadium and a strip of restaurants. Of course, that includes the hot dog restaurant it’s famous for. I really wasn’t in the mood for a hot dog though. Instead, we went to a cozy (loud) Jamaican restaurant.

It turned out to be really fun. We sat at a booth almost on top of two other couples in booths on either side of us. One of the couple’s started a conversation with us. As it turns out, the wife was Jamaican herself and the husband was a Dallas Cowboys fan. She assured us that we’d picked a good restaurant to try authentic Jamaican food. Christopher had jerk chicken, and I had curry chicken with fried plantains. She also taught us a little Jamaican history including the fact that it was Jamaican Independence weekend. Add to that the Olympics were on the television and everyone in the restaurant was rooting for the female Jamaican short distance runner. So the atmosphere was really great.

After dinner, we took a walk on the Midway. The people-watching was fantastic. The types of people there included big families, teens loitering around, and couples. There was also some sort of old car show. I couldn’t tell if it was an organized event or if people just came and parked their cars there on Friday nights in order to show them off. It must have been organized in some way, since parking there otherwise would have been illegal. We didn’t play any Midway games or ride any rides. I didn’t really feel the need to spend two dollars to get a chance to knock over cans and win a goldfish.

On the way back home, we both agreed that it was a really fun night – but now that we’d been there, we could cross it off the list and not need to return. Not unless we were taking someone new there or going with a big group.

The rest of August was spent extremely busy with work for the both of us. Plus, I caught a cold that had me at work but probably only mentally actually in the game about 50% for about a week. I’m very glad I got over that through liberally consuming vitamin C and zinc.

Somewhere in there, we also went for a mid-morning Saturday walk with some co-workers through the Financial District and across the Brooklyn Bridge. The weather was great that day, and the walk was a lot of fun with good photo-ops.

Now, it’s September, and we have some more fun things coming up soon.

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