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.