Captain Tsubasa in the white village

I read an in-flight magazine and found the articles about a bar in Madrid. In the photos, the glasses were organized very well in the tidy bar space. "Is this a bar now a days in Madrid? It's so clean and bright. Even no smoking seat can exist."
I was often visited Spain in my youth. With describing a bar in those days, it's very smoky and bunch of tooth picks and paper napkins were thrown away on the floor. A bar used be such a messy stuff. I smoked Spanish cigarette like "Fortuna" or "Ducados" at the standing counter and asked a bartender for an ashtray in the beginning. But later, I just got dropping my cigarette ash on the floor looking after another customers. How much the bar was messy was the barometer how much the bar had popularity. In another words, the messiness was a kind of decoration for the bar.

But it's a story about a bar in big city. There were also small tidy family-run bar especially in country side. The bar which I rushed into on the day in Mijas must be one of them. Mijas was charming village on the hill side in Andalusia region of Spain. From the village, you can look over far away to the Mediterranean Sea. All house walls were painted in white. So it's known as "White village of Andalusia" Because of the high altitude, the picturesque village has changeable weather. On the day, the sky was covered with gray cloud and shortly after it became hail. I got the sudden hail and run into the bar urgently.

When a shop master saw me who were drenched, he passed me a towel before everything. Late afternoon, there were two customers at the counter. I guessed they were a retired master of the bar and a frequent customer. They played with dice. The result of football betting was posted on the wall behind them. The master took part in the dice after he served me a coffee.
After a while, a boy came out from inner part of the bar. It must be a residential part down there. "Papa, Grand pa, it's beginning" The boy said to the master and the old man at the counter. "Is it the time?" The old man responded glancing the watch. The master turned on the TV in the counter. All person fixed their eyes on TV. So did I with thinking what kind of important news would be shown.

Shortly after, I heard a familiar theme music and saw a familiar animation on the monitor. The TV program was Japanese animation about football "Captain Tsubasa". It's titled "Campeones: Oliver y Benji" in Spanish. I felt the family of the bar looked at me and grinned.
"A hola saca! (Now shoot!)" Although I got slight miss match feeling between Japanese look character and Spanish translation voice, I was pleased seeing unexpected thing in unexpected place.
If it wasn't hail, I would not know the fact that a family in Andalusia was looking forward the Japanese animation everyday. It's trivial thing? I think life might be consist of such a trivial things.
After finishing the animation, I came out from the bar. The weather was already recovered. And the white village was lighted up with reddish sunlight of dusk. I kept walking on the wet pavement to the bus stop for Torremolinos .