Chapter 8 - Eggs

Kat and Samu had settled on having a spicy Korean hotpot for dinner. Hearty, warming and everyone could have as much or as little as they wanted. Plus, Kat hadn't had decent kimchi in months - the one Korean restaurant in Glasgow's west end was good, but a little pricy for a student trying to get through her education without too much debt. Fortunately, Kat's mum had a fully stocked kitchen and the only thing they needed to have droned over from the supermarket were some large eggs. They agreed that two each would be plenty and wanted some left over for breakfast the next morning.

Grandma and Grandpa were glued to the TV as usual during sumo season. Anna, Kat's mum sitting at the her corner of the large L shaped dinner table, knitting a scarf. The table was in the traditional style - low to the floor and make of a nice old wood that needed polishing every now and then. In Scotland, people would have mistaken it for an oversized coffee table, not realising that floors, of course, are for sitting on. Anna used to tell stories to Kat and Samu when they were growing up about Scottish and English pirates who had first visited The Orient in search of trade, treasure and plunder. And how many of them had returned to their native islands with ships fully of dinner tables, in the "correct" low style. They couldn't find anyone to buy them in Europe or the Americas, as these were all "Peoples of The Chair" until one particularly clever private captain insisted that these were in fact tables designed for placing one's coffee or tea cup down on. The perfect height in fact. And as coffee and conversation go so well together, by having such a low table, one coudl fully see one's interlocutor. Anna had her kids absolutely convinced that coffee had been, therefore, invented as a marketing ploy to sell dinner tables to the heathen "Peoples of The Chair". It had given her even more glee when her children were old enough to realise that as a white Scottish woman living in Japan, she must in fact be one of these entrepreneurial pirates herself. She let them go on thinking that for a few weeks, why not let the little ones find adventure and excitement in the banal?

The meal was ready and Kat and Samu placed the large sun-doo-bu spicy hotpot in the middle of the long part of the large L shaped table, dotting small salads, plates of sausages, potato salad and bowls of rice around the table. Even though Anna's influence on the family was strong, they still ate in the traditional Japanese style - lots of small varied dishes with one or two main dishes for sharing placed in the middle of the table.

"Dad! It's out!" Kat called, not really expecting to be heard.

"I'll get him" Samu quickly added, and nipped away towards the workshop.

Grandma and Grandpa moved over to their table, sitting across from each other at the short end of the L. Their eyes and ears still clearly focused on the sumo coming from the old box in the corner of the room.

"Daiyama's surely going to win 8 of 15 matches this season" Grandpa said wistfully

Daiyama was the first Ibaraki "rikishi", sumo wrestler, in the last 10 years to reach the top ranks of the sport.

"You better not have any money riding on him doing so, husband!" Grandma retorted, with a joking aggression. She knew full well that her husband had too much respect for the old arts to engage in anything as uncouth as gambling on a sumo match. She just enjoyed poking fun - she felt it kept them both young at heart.

"Who? Me? Gamble?" he responded with faux-concern before breaking into a slow smile.

"Oh, shhh, he's on now." Their focus on the ancient TV intensified, not noticing the bowls of spicy stew/soup that had been placed in front of each of them.

Hideki and Samu returned from the workshop and took their seats at the table. Everyone, with a hasty "itadakimasu!", the traditional Japanese pre-meal word of gratitude, tucked into their home made comfort food.

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Polite conversation was exchanged, the weather, the work day, local news, this neighbour had a new shop, that neighbour had a young grandchild on the way. Of all the cultures to mix the British and Japanese, or more specifically the Scottish and Japanese one had its unique features. Japan had developed an advanced set of grammatical and word choice to allow politeness, speaking indirectly and without definitively saying something. The Western Scottish culture that Anna had imbued both into her children, and her husband instead approached politeness as a matter of discussing everything except the true issue at hand first, and then only doing so as if it were an after thought. And even then often, one said the direct opposite of what one meant, or framed it as a joke.

Ultimately this meant it wasn't until late in the evening after the meal was finished teas and hot chocolates had been had and everyone was preparing for bed that Kat, attempting to be off-hand and casual struck up the conversation she wanted have.

"Mum, do you remember our first trip to Kyoto?" Kat asked, wiping down the wooden table and putting zabuton cushions away for the evening.

"Yes, of course, you were... 12 I think. We walked the 10,000 gates at the Fox Shrine, and you hurt your knee and cried until we got you a lolipop." Anna laughed. Hideki and Samu smirked as well.

"It was worth it - I even remember it was a blue raspberry lolipop too"

"It has been a while since we all took a trip, perhaps we could shut the workshop for a weekend and travel down" Anna said, half to herself.

"Well, yes, I'd like that. But I brought it up because, do you remember the little temple we found, just south of the willow district, the one we passed through on our way back from watching the martial arts tournament?"

"Oh, yes of course, it was so quaint."

"Do you still have the photos we took?"

"Umm, yes, I think we do" Anna looked at her husband "Hideki, be a dear, you had all the photos saved in "real" format, didn't you, did you ever organise them?"

"Well, no" Kat's father replied, "but in this case you are in luck. I know exactly where those photos are, I use the photo we took of the ceiling inside that temple as the back of the business cards I give to the non-Japanese clients. They love that whole mysterious eastern dragon symbolism."

"Can I see the photos dad? I want to check something." Kat answered.

"Sure, right now? Okay then, just a moment."

Kat's brother Samu asked "What's this all about Kat? You come back all of a sudden and it is for these old family holiday photos?"

"Don't be so mean." Anna scolded him

"Nono, it's a fair question. Samu, tell me please you've been keeping up with the news vids - mum and dad haven't even heard about The Object."

"Yeah, sis, it is all anyone has been talking about at school and online."

Kat sighed in relief, Samu was quiet, but she was glad he stayed connected.

"Well, Samu... can you pull an image up for mum and dad?"

Samu tapped a few buttons on his personal datavice and a hologram popped up of the earth, the moon far away but just visible and some of the major artificial satellites. And The Object of course. Grandma and Grandpa tutted, they preferred to keep the living room tech free, except for their old TV.

Hideki came back into a hushed room, with everyone looked at the hologram of The Object orbiting Earth and a newscaster on loop repeating the few facts that were known, or that the media had been told they were allowed to share with the general public.

"This is The Object you were talking about, Kat?" Hideki said, sitting down with a handful of "real" photos.

"Yes, and the reason I came back" Kat said "is I think I know what it is."

The room was silent except for the newscaster, who was now speaking in some other language, maybe Russian.

Kat leaned over and lifted up the photos from in front of her dad. Leafing through them, she found the shot of the beautiful black and white dragons from the ceiling of the temple. Remember that her dad had tricked her into looking at the patterns on the floor as they entered the solemn religious building until they were in the centre of the large room and then told her to look up. The photo didn't do it justice, but it captured the essence of it. Two black and white dragons flying in the sky, with a very slightly off-white red hue to their breath. They looked scary but weren't fighting each other - one with mouth open, the other with mouth closed was a clue - they were guardians, protectors.

Pointing at the perfectly round white sphere one of the dragon-guardians was holding in its claw, Kat said "I think The Object is a dragon egg."