Art Fair Tokyo

Until she quit work to have Mayuki, Yuriko worked at the executive committee of Art Fair Tokyo. This year’s fair, with which she had very little to do, was held last week, and yesterday was the last day. Obviously, we had to go to see it. One reason was that Yuriko wanted to; she is interested in the art, and definitely wanted to see how things were going. The other reason was to show Mayuki off to Yuriko’s former co-workers.

Showing Mayuki off was a great success. We walked into the office, and were immediately surrounded by people saying “Oooh, isn’t she cute?”. (This is, of course, an indisputable truth.) Everyone seemed very pleased to see her, and Mayuki responded by being very smiley, and very pleased to see everyone.

The Art Fair itself was a bit more mixed. A six-month-old baby is not the ideal companion in such a context, although some other people who know Yuriko told us that Mayuki was cute, and Mayuki actually fell asleep while I was carrying her around. So, although it looked busy, and there were some interesting looking galleries and works on display, we didn’t have as much time to look around as even I would have liked, and Yuriko wants to spend longer in such places than I do. Maybe when Mayuki is a bit bigger, we’ll be able to work out some sort of pattern that lets Yuriko enjoy it properly.

On the way back home, we were sitting next to an older lady on the bus. She was very taken with Mayuki (this is apparently quite common), and even gave us sweets “to eat on the baby’s behalf”. That’s not so common.

The interesting thing was that she commented, in the course of the journey, that my Japanese was very good, and asked where I was from. Both the comment and the question were directed at Yuriko…