“There’s another dead end, Daddy!”
For some reason, my five year old likes to find dead ends. He pulls me down side streets, squeezes into narrow passages, forces me to duck under washing lines, and so on. And all in the hopes of finding a road that leads nowhere, forcing us to retrace our steps.
So the other day, my son and I took a right turn at a spot where we normally go straight ahead. And then we took a left partway up this unfamiliar street at my son’s suggestion. I actually had to twist my body sideways in order to squeeze inot a little lane between two buildings. I figured that we would soon reach a wall and have to go back. But oddly, the narrow lane began to widen somewhat, enabling us to walk side by side. And sure enough, after a minute or so of progress, we hit a dead end. A brick wall blocked the path forwards, although I could hear traffic not far off on the other side.
“Yeyy! We reached a dead end!” exclaimed my son happily. “Let’s go back to the shop, Daddy!”
“What shop do you mean?”
“Over there! On this street, Daddy.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “There couldn’t be a shop down this little lane. There wouldn’t be any customers. How could anybody find the place? Come on, let’s go back home,” I said.
“No, Daddy, you’re wrong!” insisted my son. “It is a shop. It has letters on the window.”
Well, I thought there would be no harm in having my son lead us to the place he thought was a shop, and having him read the letters on the window. I fully expected them to spell a message such as, “Neighborhood watch,” or “CCTV”
He started to read the letters aloud. “C, U, R, I..”
Eventually he spelled “CURIOSITY SHOP”.
It was just as well the letters were upper case, since he still has issues with lower case. And it was also handy that the letters were English, since he would have struggled with most Japanese characters too.
I wondered if the message was in fact supposed to be “Curious shop” rather than “curiosity shop,” since the shop itself was an oddity. I thought perhaps this was a shop which mostly operated online. Or maybe it was some sort of pop up business, seeking to lure a particular clientele, which wanted to be in on the secret. Such customers probably spent more than window shoppers.
Just then there was a tinkling of a bell at the door. A female Japanese voice called out, “Welcome. We’re open.”
I could hardly pass on without entering when we had squeezed through the opening to a narrow lane to get here. It would be embarrassing to hang around the front door and then just leave.
So I had my son guide me through the front door and called, “Good day!”
*
What is this curious little shop which is
hiding down a side street in Tokyo? Who
would put a shop in such a difficult to find place? What kind of curious things does it sell? Find out in the second part of the story next
week!
Vocabulary:
a dead end – a street which reaches a wall
or obstacle, so that you cannot progress further along it
to squeeze into something – to force
(yourself) into a tight space
to duck under something – to lower your
body to avoid hitting your head or upper body against a low object, such as a
tree branch
a lane – a very narrow back street or side
street
neighbourhood watch – an organisation of
local residents who help to protect the area by watching for criminals or
people behaving suspiciously
CCTV – security cameras
upper case letters – capital letters: A, B,
C, etc.
lower case letters – letters which are not
capitals, such as a, b, c, etc.
a pop up (business) – a (business) which
starts suddenly and lasts for only a short time
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