A clue: the haves and have-nots.

There is a store in Japan called Zoff that has inexpensive but cute eye wear and I decided that I should buy a pair or two while I'm here because glasses, like belts, are a useful tool but shouldn't be relegated to simple utilitarianism. Why use a piece of rope when you have your snazzy Western belt buckle, right? So, I bought a pair a while back. I hadn't really worn them much, though, because they are a little bit more delicate than my hunk o' plastic frames that can take a lickin and keep on tickin. But last night, I was going out to dinner with a former student and I decided I should wear the new ones. So I put them on and to my extreme surprise, I realized they are vaguely reminiscent of Sarah Palin's glasses. Well, what can you do? It's not as though I bought them because of that plus it seems unlikely in terms of fashion no-no's that her eye wear choices will go the way of the Hitler mustache. So I put them on and went downstairs.

My mom was there to see me out and complimented my new glasses. "Thanks," I told her. "I just realized, though, that they kind of look like Sarah Palin's glasses."
"Who's that?" she asked me.
Even given who was asking this question, I was shocked: we live in the internet age; even my mom gets her daily headlines emailed to her from the New York Times; we watch the international broadcasts of CNN and the BBC World News.
"Are you serious! You don't know who that is," I replied.
"No. And should I?"
"It's McCain's vice presidential running mate!"
"Oh, that," she said with some exasperation. "I thought you meant someone I knew."

It was ballroom dancing, but I swear we weren't watching

We happened to have the TV on and there happened to be a broadcast of some Pan-Asian ballroom dancing competition. 'Watching' would be a very loose description of my mom and my activity vis á vis this program. Anyway, some couple was dancing and the woman's costume was, in a word, hideous. I may never have been a huge fan of professional ballroom dancing outfits, but I am used to the female dancers having at least some small piece of cloth they can refer to as a 'skirt' somewhere near the crotchal region. This woman's costume was missing this vital piece of cloth and so was simply wearing a unitard. But not a normal, spandex kind. It was a nude colored, nylon body-stocking with barely enough sparkly rhinestones in the three most necessary places to avoid being jailed.
"Ugh," I moaned. "I can't believe that costume. It's disgusting."
"Well," said my mom, "I don't think Japanese should even be ballroom dancing."
"I don't think this couple is Japanese. They look maybe Chinese?"
"Whatever. Asian. I don't think Asian people look good dancing like this."
"Why not?" I asked, my curiosity piqued by her disdainful tone.
"Well," she began, "first of all, their legs are too short..."
She never got to a second reason, though I'm sure there was one. Maybe even a third. But we'll never know because my laughter totally cut her thought process short. But I must say I was proud that she used the word 'Asian;' I've finally broken her 1960's habit of referring to all Asians as 'Orientals.'

If the shoe fits...

I noticed a pair of unfamiliar grandma-like sandals in our genkan-entryway and thought maybe there was someone here. So I asked my mom, but she said no and why do I ask. "Because there are a pair of old granny shoes in the genkan that I've never seen before."
"Oh, those are mine," she tells me.
"Those granny shoes?" I ask.
"Yes, I thought I'd start wearing them from now...," she responds.
I thought about it for a minute.
"Because you're getting old or because it's getting warm?"
She laughed so I thought she was going to say, "Both" but she didn't say anything at all. Sometimes her actions are super CB*

* Yay! Footnote number 2
cho bimyo means 'very hard to tell' - I recently read an article about this kind of Japanese that they are calling KY-style Japanese. I want to bring it to the US because if it's possible to make something that already is kind of meaningless to me even more meaningless while somehow retaining some significance, then I'LL DO IT.

Maybe I'm an asshole

Is everyone familiar with this magazine known as FRUiTS that publishes pictures of young people with outrageous fashion sensibilities for the rest of us to wonder and gawk at? Well, I don't know if it is because the Japanese are more attached to youth culture and fashion than much of the Western world, but there is a certain faction of, shall we say, older people who dress in this same outrageous manner. There was one such individual where my mom and I were eating lunch today and I was thinking that someone should start a magazine to document this currently ignored fashion demographic. They certainly have as much "style" as their younger counterparts. I was taking stock of this woman in her 70s dressed in black stiletto boots with a red plaid turn-down rim, leggings and cute mini-skirt jumper accessorized with a necklace made of fist size plastic beads and a big, floppy hat, wondering what I would name my fantasy magazine, when it came to me like a vision: DRiED FRUiTS. I guess it's kinda mean (maybe I am an asshole), but it was also pretty funny and of course I started laughing out loud, so my mom asked me what was so funny, and when I told her, she burst out laughing, too. I guess that means we're both kind of jerks.