Why she is great

Obviously there are too many reasons to put here now. This blog can only exist because of why she is great. Here is one more reason:

A few weeks ago she was getting ready to go play a concert in Tateshina. I happened to find her list for the concert. Listed, in this order:
Violin
Music
Music stand
Coffee etc.

I didn't comment on it at the time, but when I finally thought to tease her about needing to write 'violin' on her list of things to take, she told me that she always does because once on the way to the airport to begin a tour she realized she'd forgotten her violin at home . She had to borrow a violin for the first venue. It's amazing to me, too.

I was talking about this kind of thing with Jun chan who had stayed at our house to take care of gramps while we were on our trip. It came up because my mom almost left to teach with out her violin the very morning after we'd joked about the list. Anyway, she told me about a time she was talking to her boyfriend on her cell phone getting ready to leave and was freaking out because she couldn't find her cell phone. Her boyfriend told her he was sure she'd find it the moment they hung up. And of course, she did. It's good to know that this greatness will continue into the next generation. Hopefully one day Jun chan's child will also start a blog, but they'll need to come up with a different name than 'my crazy tokyo mother' or else I swear I'll sue.

It's like 'ding-dong-ditch' cellular style

I've been lazy, so this actually happened several days ago. I did write in on paper, so I'll just transpose:

This morning, my mom asked me if I'd heard the phone ring at about 1am. I had not; it must have been her cell phone. "It only rang once," she told me. Was it a text message? Was it a wrong number? "I don't think so. I think it was a weird one." Silence. Silence continues and then we turned to each other and said, "Huh?" at the same exact moment. What were the chances. Anyway, she went to see who had called. "It was definitely a weird one." (I knew, of course, that she meant a prank call, in case 'a weird one' wasn't ringing a bell for you regular people out there).

But, my logical self kicked in. If someone was calling to harass you, wouldn't they let it ring more than once? "I don't know, but the number was hidden. I'm sure they called just to annoy me. They've done it before. It's why I usually leave my cell in the kitchen at night."

I can't really believe that someone would call and let it ring once then hang up, even if it had happened on a few occasions. It brings back memories of sleep-overs in my younger days, calling up random numbers and someone saying in a thick Persian accent, "Hello? Your dog is in my backyard." It's only funny if you hear the right accent. But, even we pre-adolescent girls knew it wasn't fulfilling unless the prankee answered. I mean, I know that Japan is über well-mannered, but this is ridiculous. It seems somehow wrong that even prank callers are polite in Japan.

Technology 5

I forget why it even came up, but my mom was saying this morning how she wished she still knew someone who knew flag signals like this but in Japanese, obviously. I guess she learned it once when she was little. Now I assumed that, as that link may have shown you, this kind of flag signaling probably had some kind of military origin, so I asked if she knew what it used to be used for.

"Well," she said, "this was before there were cell phones..."

I think of all the youth in Japan currently spending every waking minute texting from their cell phones and then try to imagine what life must have been like when my mom was young. I guess, you never left home without two handkerchieves.