Bem-Vindo a São Paulo

We arrived in São Paulo and the air smelled like forest; jungle birds soared high over the airport parking lot.

Lilli's younger brother Charles picked us up at Garulhos and had a surprise waiting for us:


The ornament for the top of our casamento [wedding celebration] cake, portraits of us in the Okinawan kimonos we'd be wearing in a few days.

I was blown away by the size of S.P., which sprawls much larger than NYC with rolling hills and funky architecture that's a mishmash of 500 years of history (much more on this later)

Lil on the 16th floor balcony of her parents apartment in Aclimação

Getting settled into her childhood room, Lil found a bag of gemstones (her family deals gems in their store downtown) that will surely wind up in her work. Above her head is a montage poster of baby headshots:

The Higas apartment has 70s-style curved airport windows:

After welcoming us with delicious fresh fruits, Lilli's okásan [mother] Kimiko took us to Liberdade, the center of S.P.'s Japanese population, where we stopped first at Doces Kanazawa, where they make some of the best sweet mochi for markets around the city. By the look on her face, you can tell this is a childhood favorite, right?





Some mochis we sampled before walking around Liberdade:

Our shopping mission was to find tabi [white split-toed socks] to wear under the getta [wooden sandals] we'd wear during the casamento:

The grafitti in S.P. are different very different in style to NYC:





And the Telefonica phonebooths are funky too:





Still tired; I swear I get happier the longer I am in country.

The sun began to set over Liberdade and it was time to meet otósan [father] Harutaka and wrangle Lil's brothers and their wives for a welcome dinner of sashimi.





Okásan, Mieko and Charles over shimeji mushroom-stuffed squid with ponzu sauce (whoa).

Lil's older brother Tetsuo and his wife Rosana weren't sure what to make of "Bone-Sucking" BBQ sauce we brought for them... until our sayonara barbecue our last night in town, where he brought spectacular American flavor to the Okinawan culinary mix.

Perhaps residual New York stress in my system, perhaps all the espresso Okásan made after dinner, perhaps sleeping in a strange bed in a different hemisphere, but I was up much of that night, looking at the moon and breathing and listening to dogs bark in an open yard 16 floors below our window.