A group of Japanese tourists was sitting at the table next to ours drinking vodka and toasting each other. When my bowl of borscht arrived , they all stopped what they were doing and watched anxiously to see me taste it. Marge told me I had an audience. I made the thumbs up sign and told them the borscht at Nostlagia was ichiban (number 1). They asked where we were from. When I said Boston, one of the ladies from Hiroshima said she had been to Boston and liked it very much. Two of them were from Hiroshima, one from Osaka, one from Kyoto, and one from Nagasaki. They wanted to toast with us so I raised my glass of mineral water and said "Kampai!", which delighted them. They were excited about the borscht and about thinking I spoke Japanese. The lady from Hiroshima invited me to visit her there. I was about to run out of Japanese words when they left so I said sayonara. One of them responded "das vidanya" and another said "bye bye" so I said "vaya con dios" but I don't think they heard me and odds are they wouldn't know Spanish anyway. They were quite drunk. I hope they didn't have far to walk to the hotel.
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