Y.E.S. - Yoko's English? Subversive.

She had joined in on my skype chat with my dad and step-mom. After greetings, she informed them, "Nami is dreading summer in Japan."
Now, it's mid-August. As far as I can tell, we are in the middle of summer in Japan! The linguist in me can't let this slide by unnoticed.
"Dread is about a future occurrence. I can't dread summer. It is summer. You're using the word wrong."
"No, I'm not. I've always used it like that."
"I'm sure you have. But, dread is like about trepidation about something that hasn't happened yet."
"Well, whatever then. Nami hates summer in Japan."

I can't say she's wrong. The constant cry of cicadas are like some audio form of waterboarding to me. It's true that I had just asked her when all the cicadas will die. I'm sick of their screaming. She told this to my dad and Deborah, but she said locusts. I corrected her, but she claimed that it's the same difference. It SO isn't, but she was just confused because I guess "17-year locusts" are cicadas. Whoever invented that name was deliberately trying to stir up future Japanese mother/ Half-Japanese daughter disagreements, I just know it.

Anyway, later we continued our discussion about 'dread' v 'hate' - I can't help that I've become something of a vocabulary Nazi. "Do you really use the word 'dread' like the word 'hate'?" I asked my mom.
"No," she answered. "They don't mean the same thing."
"True," I agreed. "I'm telling you that 'dread' is always about something in the future."
She replied, "I always thought it was when you were worried about something that's gonna happen."
**Long pause as we gaze at each other like high noon (somewhere a tumbleweed is rolling by).
"EXACTLY! Going to happen! Something in the future! You just said it yourself! You knew all along!" She starts laughing like crazy.
"I'm going to go have a cigarette," she announces before she steps out. I don't think it's that she's trying to make me look like the grammar police. I think she just likes riling me up. Argh.

obviously!

I was going to a party at place called "Terakoya" and asked my mom if she knew about it. "Well," she began, "Terakoya is an old word for 'school,' like from the Edo period, so it's probably a restaurant."

The cadence of her sentence reminded me of a time when I was younger, hanging out pool side with my dad and some friends, drinking my preferred beverage at the time, a Schweppes Bitter Lemon. I noticed something cloudy floating around at the bottom of the bottle and asked my dad what it was. He said, "Well, since it's bitter lemon, it's probably made out of mostly bananas." I totally believed him for a moment there, too. But, the point of this story is not that I'm super gullible, but that he was joking whilst my mom was absolutely serious in her deduction. And, once again couldn't understand what I was kept chuckling to myself about for the rest of breakfast. If only things were as clear to me as they apparently are to her, I'd be set!

Maybe I'm a culiary prude

Since I've been here, from time to time I'll notice this concoction my mom makes sitting in the fridge, looking disgusting. It's always in a bowl, covered by some saran wrap, and it looks like chunks of grapefruit in yogurt that has gotten watery and a little curdled from the grapefruit juice. This morning, I finally saw her eating it.

"I don't know why anyone would want to eat grapefruit that's sitting in curdling yogurt," I said maybe a little more rudely than I intended.

"It's not yogurt," she informed me. I look again...the grapefruit chunks are definitely sitting in something milky. "It's plain milk that's curdled. I saw it on TV. It's really healthy for you."

I can eat a lot of things, fermented beans, stinky cheese, foie-gras, I've even eaten ris de veau, though that is an experience I'll likely never duplicate. But I have to draw the line at curdling milk. I had a traumatic curdled milk experience when I was young...my dad can attest to that!

Technology 3

My dad recently told me about this youtube video:

It coincided with my mom's finally buying a new computer and now whenever she asks me (simple) tech questions I can't help but think about this video and it makes me laugh. Then she gives me her patented 'Yoko scowl' to let me know she's not amused at my amusement. But I cannot help myself. I can't tell you how many times I've directed her to click 'okay' and she closes the window, then looks at me in surprise.

Anyway, yesterday she called me down stairs because, as she told me, her email was all gone. She has a free yahoo online account so I knew right away that there was no chance it was 'gone' but went down to see what the problem was.
"I clicked the 'yahoo' bookmark, and there's no mail!" she explained.
I looked at the book mark she'd clicked. It was for yahoo's homepage, not the mail page. Admittedly Japanese websites are notoriously hard to navigate and so she couldn't find the link to yahoo's mail service. Anyway, I told her that she should just use the yahoo mail bookmark in the future. I had put it at the top of her bookmarks so it would be easy to find, but the person who was helping her set up her new computer had collapsed the folder with her usual bookmarks. So, I opened/uncollapsed it for her and showed her where it was. "Oh, so you have to do that first?" she reflected. I can't help but imagine her in a medieval monk costume and it makes me smile.