One of my friends told me that he wanted to meet my brother. He suggested we could all go to the "magic snack" Ropossa, since he had not been there since we were there together at Halloween a year and a half ago.
Ropossa is fun in many ways. The "mama" shows magic (she is very good at spoon bending, for instance), which is fun to watch. She also likes to scare people, so she uses all kinds of strange toys to do that and burns "flash cotton" in huge amounts near you when you least expect it, etc. The place is also full of toys and games that you can play. Last but not least, the people that come there are usually very interesting and fun too.
When we entered, I introduced my brother and the others, and the Ropossa mama immediately asked us to wear strange things on our heads and to go stand behind the counter and pretend to be working. Then she took photos of us. That kind of thing happens a lot.
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| My sister in law, my brother, my friend, his wife, and his junior high teacher |
When things calmed down, my friend told me that he and his girlfriend had gotten married about a week before, so we congratulated them on that. Then another regular visitor to Ropossa showed up and said hello to me. My friend kind of froze up and asked me what the name of that man was. I said what I believed his name was, and my friend then stood up and very politely said hello to that man. It turned out that he had been his teacher in junior high, and the teacher still remembered him. Strange meeting.
My sister in law kept asking throughout the evening if it was "really true that that guy is a teacher?!". No one else seemed to find any reason to doubt that, but she found him to be very unlike a teacher, I guess.
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| Licorice |
We played some interesting children's games and more and more people kept arriving. Most of which I knew. One was the
magician Akkey who was forced by the Ropossa mama to show everyone some magic. A very funny man who is the principal of a kindergarten also showed up. He asked me what I had in my bag that I was lugging around, and I answered that it contained gifts from Sweden that my relatives had brought me. He then suggested that everyone should eat some of the licorice I had received. Japanese people in general hate licorice and think it is the most disgusting thing ever invented, but he suggested that that would just make it more fun. Seeing the faces of everyone there trying to keep some small licorice candy down was indeed quite fun. Both me and my brother like licorice (as do most Swedes) and kept eating just because it is good.
My sister in law kept asking if indeed this guy was a kindergarten principal for real.
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| Waffle mix |
The principal asked a girl that works in Ropossa to have some of the candy, which she declined. He insisted and in the end she had one. Akkey asked for some Coca Cola to get the disgusting taste out of his mouth, but the girl then said that everyone would have to wait because she was not finished eating her piece of candy yet. They had to wait and suffer for quite some time, haha. My sister in law once again tried some Swedish licorice (which she does not like), but she spit it out. She could not find any tissue or any good place to spit it out, so she just spit it out into my brother's glass of tea.
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| Toothpaste |
I usually ask my relatives to bring or send me Swedish toothpaste when they ask if I want something from Sweden. My brother brought me some toothpaste, and some waffle mix to make Swedish waffles (which my magic bar owner friend wants me to make for him).
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