if it brings you down, it ain't no favor

They are predicting unusually high pollen counts for this coming spring, so my mother was worried about my allergies and asked me, "Do you still have hay-favor?" It was cute.

Nobody can eat 50 eggs

There was a segment on the morning news about Avian Flu in S.E. Asia. They were showing footage of a local person, presumably talking about his experience, and the voice-over said, "I used to eat 12 eggs a day, but now because of the epidemic, I'm only eating half that. If it gets worse, I'll stop eating eggs altogether." My mom thought that was pretty funny and then commented, "But he probably really said that."

In all my news watching years, it has never occurred to me to doubt the veracity of news footage.

On a separate note, the Japanese news always takes great care when pairing the voice-over voice with the person being filmed; I swear that they hire professional anime voice talent! For instance if the person is a middle-aged woman, they will give her an exaggerated obasan/auntie voice, or if it's a farmer more often than not the voice will be vaguely hick-like. It always cracks me up, especially since I'm used to American news where even if they're interviewing a nomad from the war-torn Middle-East, he speaks with a BBC accent. Maybe the Japanese are going for a verité experience on the news or something... I'm not sure.

Another (unintended) life truth (by Yoko)

So, you know how sometimes when you're conversing with someone, you might interject with an, "I know, but..."? Conversely, sometimes you might even stick in an, "I don't know, but..."

Well, you can guess who just brought those two worlds together.

Today we were talking about where to buy a dustbuster while she's in the LA (I know it seems crazy that they don't sell them here in Japan, but they don't!). I suggested Best Buy and she said she might just go to a drug store. I told her she'd have a better selection at a bigger place and she responds, "I know...I don't know..," looks at me sheepishly and starts laughing.

Thinking about its intended meaning produces the same brain sensation as thinking about the sound of one hand clapping. Also, I think that this phrase is the most accurate representation of my view of understanding in my own life at this very juncture: I know (but) I don't know.

How true that is.

fact versus sentiment

English is a language that has the possibility of so much subtlety and nuance - I guess I always kind of knew this but it becomes clearer with every lesson I teach. This morning I was talking to my mom about things like this. We looked up a word that had come up in my lesson last night to see what the Japanese equivalent would be, and it seemed like none of the definitions fit at all. Pairing this with last night's debacle, I started to think maybe her dictionary was outmoded. I mean, it did kind of look like it was from the 60s and there's an entire set of Collier's Encyclopedias from the 70s in the other room, so I asked her, "How old is your dictionary?"

She looked at me despondently and sighed, "I know!"

Even if the damage is permanent, it was worth it

We were talking about this little farmers' market type place where my mom had gotten hand-made donuts and possibly the aforementioned cookies. But she said it wasn't quite the same as a farmers' market. The next thing I'm aware of is that she's looking something up in the Japanese-English dictionary. She finds whatever word she's looking for then looks at me with the most puzzled and confused expression, and asks me, "What's 'corneous'?" I'm busy eating my tangerine, but I take the dictionary from her and look to where she's pointing.

"It says 'horny'," is the next sentence out of her mouth.

At this point, I literally inhaled about a quarter of my tangerine and started alternately choking and laughing. Luckily I didn't die - I coughed most of it out (though I'm still hacking up bits of pulp and juice) but my voice got all deep and now I'm wondering if citric acid can seriously scar lung tissue. But still it might have been worth it. Maybe I'll even sound like Tone Loc - Steve, remind me to see if they have Funky Cold Medina when we go Karaokeing. The PS to this whole thing is that the word she was looking up had nothing whatever to do with markets or farmers but was about an exfoliant she bought and thus the whole 'corneous' whathaveyou. I can't follow her train of thought no matter how hard I try. And I'm trying. Hard.

A whole lot of nothing collides

My mom just got back into town and she returned bearing gifts - food gifts specifically, which, truth be told, are my favorite kinds of gifts. One of the items was a box of these wafer type cookies with a cream in the middle. She was anxious to try one and as she crunched away I asked her how it was.
"It tastes like nothing. It's like eating air."
I need to know what this is like, so I opened one and took a bite. She's right. "It tastes like sweet nothing."
Then I look at the cookie itself and notice that at the top it declares SAND and then at the bottom it says "C'est un" which is French for "It's a."



I turned to my mom and said, "It says, C'est un."
"C'est un what?"
"Exactly."

On a related note, my mom was able to decipher what the hell SAND was all about. "I think it's because it's like a sandwich." I'm sure she's right, you know. I am amazed that it made immediate sense to her. My love of all-weird-things-Japanese just collided with my mom and it all makes perfect sense somehow.

I mope, I will mope, I was moping, I moped...

My mother was reading her email this morning, when she suddenly turns to me and asks, "What's 'moped'?" I'm not immediately sure, so I ask her to read the sentence. Apparently a friend of hers was in Vietnam when her son had an accident on a moped but my mom had never heard of that before so she pronounced it like the past-tense of 'to mope' (which is also what she thought it meant and so was perplexed as to what a moped accident was). So I told her that it was like a little scooter.

Minutes later, she turns to me and says, "So, a moped is like a little scooter?"
"Those are the exact words I just used to describe it to you!"
"So, you don't ride it in the snow?"
"No. And, would that even make sense? There's no snow in Vietnam!"
She starts laughing, and asks me, "What are those snow ones called?" But before I can answer, she says, "Snow-mobile."

I don't even know what she needs me around for. Also, I think I'm going to start referring to depressive moments as having a 'moped accident' because, really, who ever gets into that state on purpose anyway.

Chin-ups, dental floss and the inevitable give-away

I have just finished my first set of chin-ups when I hear the distinct shuffle of slippers overhead. I turn around and my mother is peering down from the top of the stairs at me, dental floss still in hand.
"What?"
"I want to see you do them."
"No! I just did some! Go away! I have performance anxiety!"

She is still standing there, waiting expectantly.

"Really! Go away! I can't do them with you watching me!"

She disappears. And as I get ready to do my second set, I hear the distinct 'ping! pong!' of flossing action still at the top of the stairs.

"I can hear you there still. I'm not doing any more pull ups. Go away."

I did try, though, to do at least a few more, but somehow I kept laughing and now I know why you never see athletes laughing while they do their thing. It's pretty much an impossibility.

Does Yoko dream of electric sheep?

I had a nightmare a few nights ago, the kind that is so stressful and painful that when you finally wake up (undoubtedly in a cold sweat) you can't help but feel the extreme relief that you don't actually have to deal with the situation or find a way to make it all work out because... it was all in your mind. Anyway, I breathed my sigh of relief and went back to sleep. In the morning I told my mom that I'd had the craziest, most stressful dream in the middle of the night, and all she said was, "I wish I could have one."
"You wish you could have a stressful dream?"
"Any dream. I don't have them anymore."

And so, we arrive at our answer, and the answer is: no.

What makes the singular so much cuter?

My mom was trying to explain what a goya was - I've found out that it is also known as winter melon or bitter melon - but anyway, she described it to me as "like cucumber but with a bump." Tell me that isn't cute somehow. The goya however is less cute. Take a look. I don't think I want to eat this:


Incidentally there is a popular band in Japan right now called "Bump of Chicken" but I have to say, I don't think that the singular thing is helping them out at all.

If the idiot looks at the finger, what does that make the pointer?

"If a man points to the moon, an idiot will look at the finger" - Sufi proverb

The other day I poked the side of my pointer-finger with a new metal-wound low G ukulele string. At the time it didn't hurt much, so I didn't really think about it even though it bled a little. The next morning, it was sore and a little swollen. Then as the day progressed, it got a little more infected-looking and painful. I told my mom about it and she said that she had some topical ointment that might help get rid of the infection, so I put on a gob and covered it with a band-aid.

The next morning at breakfast, I removed the band-aid to see how it was doing, and amazingly it was practically healed! No more swelling or infection. So, I stuck out my finger to show my mom, and said, "Look!" She looked up toward the ceiling, to where my finger was pointing. She looked back at me again.
"No, here!" I said shaking my finger. Again, she looked over in the direction I was inadvertently pointing, searching in confusion for what I was pointing to.
"My finger!"

So, like I said, if the idiot looks at the finger, what does that make the pointer? Maybe I am an idiot; I certainly laughed like one - we both did.

on the true nature of being

I'd forgotten to write about this when it happened, but I think about it enough that I think I will write it now.

My mom was getting ready to play a concert a few weeks ago and so was practicing daily which had been a rarity what with the holidays and things happening. After about 3 or 4 days of practicing in a row, she was taking a break in the living room when I walked in and she commented to me:
"I finally feel like a real person today! I mean, a real person who plays the violin. I mean, a real violinist."

I think she was self-correcting her errors but when I think about it, that's the order I hope to perceive myself in, too. I'd rather be a real person over a 'real teacher' or an 'real artist' any day.

When life gives you lemons...

At the end of our meal last night, my mom picked up the slice of lemon sitting on the plate for the fish, picked the seed out of it and popped the entire thing, peel and all, into her mouth and started chewing! I was surprised to say the least, but felt something akin to filial pride fill me as I thought, "That's a lesson! 'When life gives you lemons, eat the whole damn thing!'" Feeling happy with this I sat back and mused to her that I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to eat the peel...when she unceremoniously spit the entire thing out, still intact, and declared, "That lemon was too hard."

I guess even Superman has his kryptonite.

Alien basketball fans

I was watching the Spurs/Nuggets game last night and my mom watched for a minute, too, and finally asked me what all that squeaking was about. I listened and then I told her it was the sound of their sneakers on the court as they stopped short (I'd stopped noticing it I guess). She said it sounds like an alien language.

I was watching the Celtics just now and was listening to the squeaks again. I told her it was pretty funny that she thought it was an alien language, and she explained further that she'd thought it was like a simultaneous broadcast of commentators, only this wasn't in a foreign language, but in an alien language.

Basketball is forever changed for me. I can only wonder what those alien commentators are saying.

onomatopeia - mctm style

My mom didn't like the lettuce in our salad at dinner tonight. I told her I thought it didn't taste bad, but she said it wasn't pasa-pasa. Now there are a million different words in Japanese that come from the sound of something, often used to describe texture, but this one was new to me. So, just to make sure she hadn't just invented it on the spot, I asked her if that word really exists in Japanese. She said it does. "It's the sound of dry bread."

Apparently our lettuce was lacking the quality best summed up as that of the sound of dry bread. I'll ask my grocer about that before I buy the next head of lettuce.

Movies (rock me Amadeus)

It's my week off (actually, everyone in Japan's week off, practically) and one of the TV stations is playing one old movie each night this week. I actually watched Gone With the Wind in its entirety for the first time last night. What was most interesting was, even though I knew the cliché moments from the movie, I didn't actually have a clue about the story at all. Anyway, then tonight they played The Sound of Music, and at the scene where Maria (Julie Andrews) decides to make the children's play clothes out of her drapery, my mom starts laughing to herself. I asked her what was so funny, and she said that she never thought she'd see two movies in a row where someone makes clothes out of the curtains. For anyone who hasn't seen Gone with the Wind, obviously it happens in it, too. She's right, though. What were the chances of that? I keep thinking about it and laughing to myself. (Oh, man, I am her daughter.)

On a side note, this same channel (which is called BS, by the way) was playing "Scarface" on New Year's morning (an odd programing choice, right?) and my mom had never seen it before (as she said, "No wonder I've never seen it; it's so violent!"). I pointed out Al Pacino and that actor F. Murray Abraham since I knew she'd recognize him as the guy who played Salieri in the movie Amadeus. "It is Salieri!" she remarked when she recognized him. I couldn't think of his name right then, but said I thought it started with an 'M.' (I was close!)

"It's Mozart," she told me.

The battle for kin'en continues...

We were at a coffee shop at a gas station, sitting in the smoking section, not that that means anything in Japan - there might be two tables right next to each other and one will be smoking, the other non-smoking. Anyway, the section we were in was definitely a smoking section, but it also had the one long couch type seat instead of stand-alone chairs, so when this couple came in with their sleeping grandson, maybe 2 years old, they came to lay him down on the couch area. I told my mom she shouldn't smoke since there was that baby and everything. And she says, "They're probably sitting over here because he smokes."

She was talking about the grandpa in case you thought the same thing I did initially. And she was right. Sigh. This country.

P.S. Kin'en means no smoking

Beauty for beauty's sake

We're literally about to run out the door, but I had to tell this first...

There's this vase full of these plant stalks with red berries on them; very pretty, but when they are on the table, they block the view of the TV so they've been sitting on a side table, out of the way. This morning, just before we're about to leave, my mom puts it back so it's in full view but blocking the TV a bit, saying, "When we're not home, let's put the vase here. It looks prettier that way."