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fixed jacket

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The handle tore off the slide of my coat on Thursday. Happily, I've managed to get it fixed already.

It's a suede coat and for some reason my dry cleaner balked at fixing it. Not only was the repair out of his league, but he told me that he couldn't even clean suede.

Puzzled and concerned, I took my bagged coat with me on some errands and wandered the streets looking for someone who could fix it. In Tokyo, this sort of thing never takes long due to the insane population density—there are services like dry cleaners located on practically every block. Happily, the woman at one not-too-distant dry cleaner's spoke some English, simplifying my halting Japanese explanation of the situation. It may not sound like much, but being able to explain stuff like this in Japanese is still something of a victory for me. I seriously had visions of the coat remaining unrepairable or waiting until I next venture over to Canada at some distant time.

It's a funny coincidence that this coat should have developed a problem at the same time that Ken-my-brother is coming for a visit. Because he's got the same coat. One of our coincidental identical purchases over the years, like our watches (though, tellingly, what he bought as a sports watch is what I wore every day; slight difference in style between us—he's got a Tissot for his day-to-day watch) and our leather coats.

Three good things that happened today:

1. managed to talk through a coat's repair needs (in semi-Japanese)

2. Kenny and I had a good time while Mari was out shopping

3. we had some friends over for dinner