Japan, flamingo and hard boiled eggs

Japan is a distant, authentic, beautiful and Flamenco country. Very Flamenco.

In 2015 I was working there for five months in Osaka, in the south of the country, very close to the ancient and ancient capital of Japan, the exquisite and beautiful Kyoto.

I was hired there to teach classes, dance on tablaos and choreograph the end-of-year show, of the Flamenco school, Punta y Tacón, of the all-round flamenco dancer and teacher Mariko Matsumoto.

First contact: honors registration

After my landing in Osaka, and after 22 hours of travel, I was picked up at the airport by Mariko’s school secretary, whose name I don’t remember now, although I do remember her welcoming expression.

Communication between the two was limited, since English is not a language that is widely used there, and the average level of Japanese is generally lower than the average level of English in Spain.
It seems incredible, right?, that we Spaniards have a higher level of English than in another country, but it is true :).

The secretary took me to my small, charming apartment, where she said goodbye to me until the next day.

In what would be my new home for a few months, she received me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers decorating the living room, along with a welcome card, and a wonderful Japanese dinner.

Then I got into my small, comfortable bed and fell into a “pleis, plás”. And I dove into a. deep and restful sleep, for about 10 hours.

Waking up in Japan

The best came the next morning.
On my first morning in the country of the rising sun.

As you already know, “at night all cats are brown,” so it wasn’t until that first morning when I went out to the street to look for a place to have breakfast, that I began to be aware of where I was.

Not all neighborhoods are the same

The school where I was going to work was located in a neighborhood of Osaka, that is, it was not the center of the city at all.
My neighborhood was called: Motomachi Kadomashi.

That “small location detail” would change everything.

Probably if I had been on a leisure trip, I would never have visited my neighborhood, but I was going to work and both school and my home were located in Kadomashi.
Where tourists did not arrive nor did the most modern lights and novelties of the country. It was a simple, quiet and very oriental neighborhood.

Have breakfast at Kadomashi

When I went down to the street that cold January morning, I thought I was on the set of a movie.

My neighborhood was so super incredibly authentic Japanese, I would have never been able to imagine it could exist.

To begin with, I couldn’t read ANYTHING that was posted on the streets. Not on the posters, not on the labels, in the stores… hehe nothing… this was starting to get fun 🙂

I was hungry, I wanted to have breakfast, have a coffee so I could wake up well, something I’m super used to (maybe too much…). I was looking for my coffee and my toast, like the good Andalusian that I am.

So I started walking, wandering through those small streets, with their beautiful little signs that said something that I had no idea about, but that nevertheless transmitted me a lot of peace and serenity.

Kadomashi was a beautiful place. Silent, careful and clean. Tiny. Pleasant. Serene and beautiful.
No tourists. No foreigners.
Japanese. Very Japanese.

I remember walking with my headphones on and listening to some beautiful Colombian songs, which I was absolutely in love with and had been listening to on loop for some time.

Some time later she would dance them in another place in the world, but that’s another story…
Even so, she left you the video where she danced them, in case you want to check it out. Click here.

Curiously, she would later discover that in Japan, the Colombians and the Guajiras were one of the flamenco styles that she liked the most.

From time to time I would cross paths with someone, but it was not usual. It seemed that the neighborhood was waking up and the inhabitants of this part of the world did not usually walk down the street much.

There is no coffee, there is soup

After walking for about 30 minutes, wandering around and discovering the new smells that Japan brought me, I decided to go into “something” that gave me the feeling that it was a bar.

I was filled with “adventure” and pushed the door.
A bar did appear before my eyes, where there was a good group of people and where all of them, at the same time, turned their gaze towards me.

Something they would continue doing until after a while, I decided to say goodbye to everyone and leave the place.

Therefore I entered the bar, under the watchful eyes of all the people in the place, as I told you, and I sat at the bar.

I started talking to the waitress, well sorry about the whole bar :), because the answers to my questions were given to me by any of them.

A very tender, fun and loving atmosphere began to be created.

When I took out my Japanese/Spanish book and started telling them in Japanese 🙂 “that I wanted to have breakfast”, everyone started laughing very sweetly and became interested in me: where did I come from? What was he doing in Kadomashi?

Since not even the tattoo spoke English, between gestures, expressions and the broken Japanese, between them they decided what I had to have for breakfast.

Well, I ruled out the soup, since even though it was what everyone was having for breakfast, and I like that “wherever you go, do it,” on that first morning it caught me by surprise and I didn’t feel like sipping soup in the morning at all.

So my breakfast finally consisted of:
a hard-boiled egg and a cup of tea.

Of course, when they served it to me, everyone followed my first bite of egg and my first sip of tea with their gaze. Very expectant.

For them I was an alien, because they couldn’t understand how a lonely Western woman had arrived in that part of the world.
Well, I’m sure that several of them had never seen a Westerner.

When I left the bar, I said goodbye to everyone with a splendid smile in my heart that came out of my mouth.

And this is the story of the strangest, funniest and most unique breakfast I have ever experienced in my entire life.

But my journey had only just begun…

Arigato Gosaimas Japón.