Life is a Telenovela

Well, I promised the next entry would be less heavy... Here comes soap! I just had dinner in a great little Japanese restaurant in Liberdade, São Paulo's Japantown (São Paulo has the world's largest Japanese population outside of Japan.) Next to me at the counter where I was eating my yakissoba a Japanese man who spoke no Portuguese but was apparently visiting his Brazilojapanese relatives sneezed for a full ten minutes, which made everybody in the place laugh. Full blast on the TV, the telenovela (soap) Páginas da Vida (Pages of Life) was on. There was a lot of emotion as one of the main characters had apparently become paralyzed, but when the (female) doctor massaged his legs, slowly working her way upward towards his thighs, he got his feeling back, and all the characters cried.
Soon though, the real drama was happening in the restaurant. On my left, a girl who was meeting her boyfriend at the restaurant was getting increasingly worked up and after a while she was inconsolable. This was happening right next to my yakissoba, which I still managed to eat (with chopsticks.) Anyway, I suppose you had to be there. Or maybe this scene needs Bret Easton Ellis. More later!
Alex.