Oh, on the contrary, some like it Japanese

This little frijolito loves books.  We have a select handful of Japanese language kids books that I read to him to the best of my ability, and John narrates according to their illustrations.  This leads to hilarity when the Anpanman character is interpreted as a friendly drunk with his shiny red nose and bicycle, or awkwardness when the little brown haired girl character in the pottybook about pooping is interpreted as “Mama,” but we make do and John John seems to be happy with our efforts.

My mom was here and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get more Japanese in the frijolito’s ear, so I brought out a few of the books she had given us (that had been in storage because he’s been too little anything but board books until recently).  Both have weird, slightly sad lessons...but that’s a different story.  

John John would bring books and ask to sit on her lap, so I would just passively observe the bed-time routine.  I took this picture – they are happy:

One of the times, he chose a board book of very selected Original Mother Goose Rhymes.  When we first inherited this book, I was surprised at how many of those rhymes were still there in my little grey cells.  And when my mom went to read them, I also realized how culturally exclusive, bizarre, and strange some are.  My mom did not have my same ingrained understading of them and responded accordingly.  There were some keepers.

  

Reaction from my mom, upon reading “Hey Diddle, Diddle,” out loud to John John:     “What a weird story.”

Reading No. 1 (misspellings indicate pronunciation):
“Pussy cat, pussy cat”

Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you bin?
 I’ve bin to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you, uh, 
what did you? do there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chain.
(Oh, chair.  The ‘R’ looked like an ‘N’)

John John started to get a little restless at this point.  This was not his mother’s Mother Goose.

Reading No. 2:

“Mary, Mary”

Mary, Mary quite…CONtrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle? Cockle? shells?
And pretty maids all in? a row.

I’m laughing now.  John John turns the page to what is arguably his favorite rhyme:

Reading No. 3:

“Pease Porridge”

Pea…peeez? What is that? Peeessse? 
(“It’s just pronounced ‘peas’," I told her)
Pease Porridge? Hot?

John John squirms to get off her lap. I thought he was done with Mother Goose and was going to go choose a new book. 

Nope.  He took the book from my mom, turned and gave it to me. “Read please Mama.” Then sat down in my lap.  I was dying of laughter and almost couldn’t read it myself.

Beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder

John has been DJing at a local radio station, KFJC.  It is one of the original college radio stations of the Bay Area, and is kind of famous for its experimental music.  There have been times where we are trying to tune in to 89.7 on our tuner, which has an analog dial, and we can't seem to get anything but static no matter what we do.  And then, it turns out that the static was the music.

If you listen to the tail end of the show he did yesterday (7/16's Stone Cold Lampin'), as I did from my car on my way to work, you will hear – the final track John played is a little experimental, sure, but good for listening to at 6am.  "I wonder what the next DJ will play to transition to his or her show?" I thought.  Literally, it was a sine wave.  I gave it 60 full seconds before it was too much.  I switched to NPR.  I did check in at 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes past the hour.  Still just the single sine wave piercing my head via my ear canal.  Out of morbid curiosity, I checked back in at 22 minutes and it was still the sine wave, but coupled with some other instrument and the DJ was reading a PSA over it all.  I gave up after that.  Maybe it was the sine wave for his entire show - I'll never know and frankly don't care.  We have always been huge listeners of KFJC at our house - either it or the jazz station is on if we aren't listening to records.  I'd like to think that my tolerance for grating sounds has grown broader, but there is a limit and I will turn off anything that causes distress.  Like, forget about the 8am hour on Sunday, but at 9am is Sunday Morning Coming Down, which is a show I enjoy.

At dinner last night, we had KFJC on quietly in the background.  The DJ was playing inoffensive techno - not my favorite thing but not causing any psychological trauma either.  Plus it was turned down low. 

We were eating burgers w/coleslaw  – John made it all, even the mayo for the slaw and burger condiment.  It was magnificent.  My mom's second American meal of the day (she'd had a sandwich for lunch, something she deems to be strictly American, like burgers).  

At a lull in the conversation, my mom cocks her head and says, "What's that I'm hearing?"  We listened.  It was some low pulsating techno beat.

"Some call it music," said John. 

"Well, I don't."

I can't say I disagree.

Still surprising herself at 73

My mom is visiting the frijolito (and, incidentally, us parents, too) and just arrived from SoCal where she is teaching kids in San Juan Capistrano.  This past weekend, the friends with whom she was staying threw a surprise party for her.

A historical note: One time, in the early 70s before I was born, someone attempted to throw my mom a surprise birthday party.  She said it wasn't a surprise because people would come up to her and say, "I can't come to your party," and other things like that ruining the crucial element.  

I guess she found the experience disappointing enough that she thought she would spare her offspring such awful letdowns.  In grade school, friends would have surprise parties.  I remember begging for one, but I might as well have asked for a pony for the kind of resounding NO that came back every time.  The NO was always followed by this same one story. 

End result was that I never had a surprise party until one was kindly thrown for me by the family I nannied for, when I was in my late 20s.  I don't know in what context I would have mentioned the sad affair of being a child without a surprise party at my job, but clearly this emotional scar was deep.  Deep enough for me to apparently tell my boss, and enough for her to want to make it right by throwing me a little surprise birthday party with the kids.

The surprise was not ruined, even by a seven-year-old who had the responsibility of getting me to take him straight home from school – not out to a playground as was our normal routine – without arousing suspicion.  Guess seven-year-olds can keep a secret better than adults in the 70s, though somehow that makes sense to me.

Anyway, so back to 2015:  My mom had this surprise party thrown for her. It's a roaring good time.  She excitedly showed us a photo montage someone made: of the food, and people, and my mom and Masako playing shamisen, and another Japanese lady dancing awaodori.  Clearly everyone was having so much fun.  

"It was so much fun!" my mom enthused.

"I thought you hated surprise parties," I countered, with just the tiniest hint of bitterness, because how can one ever truly fully let go of the crushed spirit of one's eight-year-old self who was denied her one true dream?

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I thought I did, but apparently I didn't."

...

Looks like surprise parties are back on the menu.

A discerning taste

We arrived to Tokyo with an 11pm touch down.  I won't say that the 11 hour flight, the first international flight with the frijolito, was harrowing, but that would only be because I wish to forget it all together.

Exhausted, sleep deprived, I was so glad to see my mom upon exiting customs in Haneda.

On the drive home, she was telling us about this special wagu beef that is the highest classification of quality, called A5.  She had gone to this butcher and was going to get the second to highest grade because the price differential between A5 and, assumedly, A4 was so vast that she didn't think it was worth the difference.  But the butcher told her that it was worth the price.  So she did - and used this A5 beef to make sukiyaki.  "It really tasted amazing!" she said.  

"I wonder what makes A5 beef so different?" I mused in my sleep deprived, manic mind set.

"The taste," she said definitavely.

"I mean, what makes makes the taste different?" I clarified.

"The flavor is better," she answered.

I am returned to the land of my forefathers.  Let the hilarity begin.

I'm less literal than I thought

I just sent my mom an email to follow up on a situation, and to ask her to "let me know where things are with regard to (this certain ongoing situation)."

Her reply: "I will show you where things are and your things (kimono etc.) are together in the attic.  Your Kabuki is on 21st at 4pm."

It took me a second but then I laughed.  And in case you were wondering about that last part, I hadn't asked about Kabuki, but it's good to know.

Historic tale #1: ca. 1993

It was finals time at my high school.  I remember because my room had never been cleaner or my desk more organized – always the first steps to a studious bout (or the final steps of procrastination) – and I sat there with a pile of books and a pile of notes, a stressed out person hoping that cramming all of that English, history, math, science, and French would stick long enough to get me through the ensuing week.  I'm sure I was sighing up a storm, not that I remember doing that, but it seems like something I would have done, since I still do.  My mom had just come up the stairs in our house; my room was just at the top of the staircase.  She popped her head around to answer my distressed sounds. 

"What can I do to help?" she asked in an unusual show of compassion for my distress.

"I don't know!  Nothing!  I'm stressed out!" I'm sure I retorted in a tirade of teenage angst.  "I'm so tired from studying all this stuff!"

"Maybe I can make you some coffee," she offered.  

Or maybe I demanded, "Just make me some coffee!!"

But in either case, moments later she brought up a steaming cup of coffee which I took and drank – thankful for some understanding/pity/help from my mom, whom I felt so alienated from so often in those awkward teenage times.  She may have even brought me a second cup when she saw how serious I was in my studying.  

But my eyelids drooped – I was loosing to the sandman.  I'd had two cups of coffee and I didn't understand.

"What is this," I asked her on her next pass by my door, "Like, decaf or something?" It was like a rhetorical question with zero seriousness attached, my attempt to be joking and poking fun at my own inability to focus and stay awake.

"Yes, it is," she replied.

"are you SERIOUS?!  YOU GAVE ME DECAF WHEN I'M TRYING TO WAKE UP?!  SO I CAN STUDY AND NOT FAIL MY FINALS?!"  is my best guess at how I responded.

"Well," she said matter-of-factly, "It's the smell that wakes you up."

It's still better than $5 in a freshly laundered pair of jeans, or even change in the couch cushions...

I wrote this god-knows-when.  I think last time my mom was visiting, as I vaguely recall the moment and I picture her sitting at our dining table.  Saying, with some effort (and this below is what I just discovered in my drafts with no further explanation):

Booger-y.
BURRgury.

I love to find these forgotten treasures.

And, in case you were wondering, she was trying to say Bulgaria.

This is what a mother's nightmares are made of...

We were chatting via Skype, catching up on the news du jour and listening to my mom make all manner of ridiculous noises at the frijolito as he crawled about.  He is always happy to see her - amazing that he can recognize his baba-chan on an iphone screen!

She often calls at this time, which is Saturday morning in Japan just before her student arrives for her lesson.  It's never a long call but I know they both like it - these calls have certainly replaced her checking in on me, her kid!  

*ring, ring* me: "Hello?"  her: "Is he awake?"  me: "Not yet."  her: "Okay, call me when he gets up.  Bye."  *click and dial tone*

Maybe it's not that harsh and in a way I should be happy about this change but in either case I digress...

As we finished up this call, my mom suddenly jumps up from her seat and says, "I have to go put on coffee - my student likes it."  

This would seem fine except that once this student arrived while we were still online together and my mother introduced us over Skype.  And she is 5.

"What?  Isn't your student five?  You are giving a five-year-old coffee??!!"

"She likes it - she doesn't even take any milk or sugar.  Just black," my mom informs me, as if that makes it any better.  "Besides, I'm making decaf."

I launch in to my spiel about how caffeine isn't good for kids but in Japan who knows how much green tea or even coca cola this child consumes.  Maybe a weekly black coffee isn't the end of the world.  Though I did have a nightmare this morning where my mom was attempting to feed the frijolito copious amounts of cake telling me he likes it!  I woke up with a racing pulse, my screaming protestations still fresh in my head.

The Frijolito's 100th Day!

I grew up looking at this picture of me taken on 

my hundredth day, so I knew there was some significance to it and calculated when our baby's hundredth day would be.

Today I did a bit of hunting to find out what it all meant and discovered that on this day, people perform a weaning ceremony for their baby called Okuizome where they offer the baby a sumptuous (though strictly ceremonial) meal of foods like snapper, rice, pickled plum, clear soup and a stone (weird, I know, but it is Japan after all).  The baby doesn't actually eat any of it - he just gets these items touched to his lips while he probably thinks, "What is this and where the hell is my milk?!"

Anyway, the ritual meal and feeding is meant to wish the baby a life with abundance and without hunger. 

The reason I was compelled to do research was because when I had asked my mom about it, she seemed sketchy on the details.  Very sketchy.  Her inkling was that maybe it was to celebrate that the baby didn't die in 100 days so it will probably survive.  Weird, macabre, and totally Yoko.

The foods in the meal all have significance (like the snapper, tai, being associated with celebration or medetai, etc.) and the stone is supposed to represent strong teeth for the child.  As my mom didn't know about this Okuizome stuff, it follows that I did not have a stone ceremoniously touched to my mouth on the day pictured above, which could very well be the reason for my life-long dental issues and nothing to do with the fact that as a child I ate candy like it was its own essential food group.  

Though I know it's no substitute for proactive parenting (don't worry: I do plan to teach this kid about self-control and dental hygiene), don't think for a moment that I'll skip out on touching a stone to his mouth tonight.  If there was ever a perk to being half-Japanese, it's doing all these weird things with impunity.

It's almost sweet that she remembers what I looked like.

Tonight our friend Matt was over and my mom was enjoying some quality time with the little frijolito on her lap.  Matt asked her if she sees a resemblance to either John or me or if he looks like me when I was a newborn.

"Sometimes," she replied.  

"When he's pooping."

Occam of the future

Last night I was scraping off the label from a new metal spatchula when my mom says to me, "Where did you find the one sided laser?"

I looked at the razor in my hand and started laughing.

Someday when everything is digital this won't be funny much less understood. But until that day:

My mom recently bought a Kindle and has been enjoying using it to read books on this trip to the US.  She bought it not only because it's lighter than carrying around a bunch of books, but also because in Japan it is easier to find English language books for Kindle than in print.

The biggest problem turned out to be that she doesn't know which books to buy, so she asked John and me for some suggestions.  We looked up a Jonathan Franzen book on the Kindle store app and the search pulled up multiple versions of the same book.

One was more expensive than the other, which I thought was kind of weird for a digital medium. 

"Maybe that one is the hardback," my mom reasoned.

Hearty laughter ensued.

First date-night

Last night, John and I left the frijolito with my mom for a quick date and caught the second half of a jazz show at Cafe Stritch.  It was the first time to leave him in the care of someone and I definitely felt some pangs of separation anxiety as we drove away from the house, but he was fast asleep when we left plus we planned to be back before any needs arose, plus my mom is great with him, plus there are cell phones... and I know it's important to enjoy some time just John and me.

The show was fantastic and we got home with plenty of time before the baby's next feeding.  And though I knew nothing had gone wrong because we had not received any frantic calls from my mom, I was very anxious to know how the first babysitting had gone.

We opened the door, my mom popped around the corner and I asked how it'd gone.  

My mom looked really excited to let us know:

"NOT A BEEP!!"

Genuine gratitude naturally leads to hijinx

Despite my mom's request that I not give birth until she arrived to the Bay Area on August 4th, at the end of July we were surprised by the slightly early arrival of our beautiful son.  My mom arrived one week later and will be here for several weeks to fawn at the cuteness of her grandson and help around the house.

On the second day of her stay, after finally having eaten several proper homemade meals, I truly felt overwhelmingly thankful to have her here.  So much so that at the end of dinner, I decided to express my gratitude in a rare but genuine expression of my feelings.

"Thank you so much," I said, maybe tearing up a little, "for coming to help.  It really makes a huge difference just to have an extra pair of hands around and I am so thankful you are here!"

The blank stare from my mom rendered this tender moment totally awkward.  

"What did you say?" she asked me.

So I repeated my sentiment a little more perfunctorily. 

"Just that it is a real help to have an extra pair of hands to cook or take care of the baby is all."

"Ohhh," she said, "I thought you said 'extra pair of pants.' "

Sorry Babs...

Neel, a former student of my mom's, became like a brother to me not just because we got along but because we both derived filial pleasure from giving my mom a hard time.

I remember once she was scolding him about his playing posture, a weird combination of a teenage slouch paired with the twisted spine of a lazy violin player resting the left elbow on the torso .  She commented in exasperated tones, "If you just sat straighter, your playing would be so much better!"  to which Neel replied, "Yoko, if you just used articles, your English would be so much better!"

Point being, Neel and I always had a natural affinity. 

Last weekend, he and his wife Lucia stopped by our house en route back down to SoCal and we had a chance to skype with my mom while we were all together.  In catching her up to their news, Neel mentioned that Lucia just got back from touring with Barbara Streisand.

"Oh, is she still alive?" was the first thing my mom said.

"She's only 71," said Lucia.  "Same as YOU!" I added.  "Boy, you are harsh."

"Barbara can be very difficult to work with," my mom nonchalantly replied.

I had to stop the conversation.  

"BARBARA? What, you're on first name basis with her? Did you work with her or something?"

The answer, it turns out, is: yes.  

Apparently the diva-esque demand was Ms. Streisand's choosing Beethoven's Große Fuge as the background music for a scene where she is vacuuming.  

Of course my mom couldn't remember the title of the movie, but googling it turned it up on (of course) my dad's website and we found out it was a 1979 movie called 'The Main Event.'

Maybe I'll watch it if I can find it streaming somewhere.

Yoko's Koan (the official beginning of FCTG)

Having found ourselves in a position of needing to secure a new set of wheels, my mom had some parenting advice to dispense about when we do:

When you do get a new car, don't make your baby pee in it.

Hearing these words of wisdom made me realize that this little frijolito's crazy Tokyo grandmother is going to be a whole new ballgame.  I can't wait to mine this treasure trove.

Here she is in the dress rehearsal for the previously mentioned play which had its run this weekend.  Alien-violin-teacher-crazy-tokyo-mother-and-soon-to-be-grandmother.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

Will my mom join the ranks?

Today was the perfect day to catch up with my mom on skype from the glorious sunny back yard of this 'wintery' San Jose.  She has kept very busy and it seems her schedule will remain quite full at least through April.  One of her upcoming projects is a part in a small play that a friend of hers is producing at a tiny 'theater' near Meidaimae.  They hope to seat 50 audience per show but my mom seems to think that if that many attend there won't be enough room in the front for the actors in the play.

"I play a person from out of the earth," she told us (cutely, I might add).  "And I teach violin."

I don't think accurately playing an alien violin teacher is going to pose much of a problem since it's terrifically close to what she actually is.  

One of her lines is to sigh to a student, "This is why I don't like kids from earth." 

Love it. 

Oh, and regarding the ranks comment, please see this link:  http://www.imdb.com/list/5ipnlh6ZjmI/

Like a five-dollar bill you found in your jeans pocket

Prompted by Bobby Jay of the salivation-enducing-encyclopedic-cooking-adventure-blog  Bobby Jay on Food, I logged in to my mctm account to flesh out the notes I have been keeping on the various things small and large which my crazy tokyo mother has been up to.  In my drafts I found an untitled entry I'd written presumably last fall when my mom was here to visit.  My guess is this is something she said to me without the realization that shifting from first to second person is not as smooth as most 'first to second' shifts, be it violin fingerings, car gears, or ballet positions.  I'm sure it cracked me up and I typed it in to a new entry verbatim to preserve the moment with the intent to write something up later.  I clearly never did, but finding it with zero context was kind of amazing.

Here is what I found:

tell them that your mother is here bothering me.

I love it.

Sports analysis by Yoko

Today, our last day in Tokyo, was spent at the Tokyo sumo stadium, the Ryoguko Kokugikan.  We lucked out that our visit coincided with the Tokyo tournament and that my mom was able to get us last minute tickets to day eleven of the fifteen-day-long sport event.  It was every bit as exciting as I remembered!  No one I know, not even my mom's friends, have been to see sumo live.  And friends from my own generation have the overwhelming belief that it must be hugely boring to attend.  THEY COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG.  It is difficult to explain the thrill of seeing these huge, strong, beef-cake dudes slamming and slapping each other into oblivion; the three minute wait as they face off; the showmanship of the salt throwing; the Yokozuna Harumafuji and his signature pushup at the line of scrimmage. 

It was all totally wonderful.

When we first arrived, though, it was still the Juryo matches.  Some were fast and finished right away; others would end up in a deadlock for what seemed like minutes before the victor threw his opponent down.  On several occasions the two monoliths seemed to hit the ground simultaneously, and then the referee sitting on that side of the mound would give his call.

But one time, after the ref gave his call, all the refs stood up and convened in the ring.

My mom leaned toward John and I and informed us:

Someone detested the ruling.

"I'm sure someone did!" said John, as I laughed

My mom now scowls at John, too.  It's a sure sign that he's a member of the family!

Just like every cowboy sings his sad song

Last time we were here, John made an infusion of Jim Beam, Aperol and sansho from my mom's backyard.  It sat untouched for the past nearly two years, and when John got here one of the first things he did was to pull it out and filter it.  The Jim Beam bottle was literally covered in dust which tells you how much of a drinker my mother is.  "I didn't even know that was HERE!" my mom exclaimed. 

Sansho leaves are something I've found nearly impossible to procure in the US, even at Japanese or other specialty grocers.  When I was living here in 2007/8, I made a very delicious panna cotta using the leaves as an edible, slightly lemony, slightly peppery garnish.  

As a side story, when I'd made this dessert, my mom was astonished at the lightness of the flavor.  "Let's eat this every day!" she said.  

"Do you know how much heavy cream goes in to each serving?" I asked her.  Then I told her.  

"Well, maybe let's not eat this every day," she sighed.

But back to my story.  We are considering taking some of my mom's sansho back to the US.  "It's a very strong bush," she told us as we looked out in the yard.  "It's the one right there, with the thons."

I love it.  As cute as tish.  She's been out of the US for 15 years now and it's taking its toll on her English.  Much to my glee.