First victim of the Japanese Ninja Widow

This morning I got some kind of insect bite. I did not see it, so I don't know what it was. But it wasn't a mosquito. Or, if it was a mosquito, it was a mosquito on steroids. It swelled up at the location at first (pictured), but now my whole arm is slightly bloated. It's been nearly 6 hours but the effects are not gone. In fact, I am having some trouble typing since my arm is sore and my brain isn't functioning to its highest capacity. I think I might have a slight temperature and was mentioning this to my mom. "It's possible, you know," she told me. "Because of the venon." It was cute. Steve asked me if it was a black widow. I don't think so. He suggested grey widow. Maybe that was what it was. My mom said she thought it was something invisible since I didn't see it. Clear widow? or maybe it was just that I didn't see it. So, I guess it was a ninja widow.

mchjd post 9: Will I ever grow up?

I had a student today, a woman a little younger than my mom but contrarily very proper and polite; a most agreeable student. Today's lesson covered things you might need to know should you need to visit a doctor, with phrases like "the flu" or "food poisoning." Naturally, the word "diarrhea" was also in the text book, but I am enough of a professional at this point that I didn't even crack a smile. Not to say I didn't want to but, proudly, I repressed the juvenile urge to giggle. What happened next made this valiant effort worthless, though.

You see, she had trouble with the word's enunciation. The first time, she said DI-a-rrhe-a. So I corrected her. "The stress is on the third syllable," I said in a teacherly way. di-a-RRHE-a
I felt proud that I was keeping it professional.

Then there was a dialog between a doctor and patient. Of course the writers of this text book couldn't give the patient the flu. Nooo, it had to be food poisoning. At this point, I'm still holding it together, but when my student gets to the line in question, she makes the same error, "I have DIarrhea." So I remind her, "It's diaRRHEa." I'm still holding up.

Here, she begins to chant to get the correct pronunciation firmly into her brain. I'm used to this behavior from students - repetition really does help - but all of a sudden I'm aware that she's saying, "I have diaRRHEa. I have diaRRHEa" over and over again and the second grader in me comes flying out full-force. Tears of laughter begin welling up in my eyes and I can't breathe. She looks concerned and asks me if she's said something wrong. I shake my head 'no' and force myself to think of something-anything!-else. But it's too late; I'm laughing and no longer feeling any pride, but rather that I'm going to get fired if I can't pull myself together. The rest of the lesson was me reminding myself not to remember this incident, forgetting it, then wondering what it was I was trying to not remember, remembering it again and having to quell any hysterics. It was this pattern over and over again, but I managed to survive the remainder of the lesson without incident, though I don't know that 'teaching' accurately describes what I was able to do in those 20 minutes.

It was "The Blair Witch Project" redux

Do you remember the scene where the kids find that little bundle with something suggestive of inner workings and something suggestive of teeth and the horror that perhaps swept through your guts when you saw it?

Well, yesterday I was browsing through a tin that contained several medals my grandfather had been given, as well as some other miscellaneous items that had hitherto not been examined. One of my favorite pastimes at my grandmother's house had always been to hunt for treasure. The treasure being old photographs which my grandmother had kept all of out of what I can only assume was a sense of duty, though I must say her organizational methods left something to be desired. But that's part of what made it exciting for me; every time I visited, I went through forgotten drawers and found treasures of photographs that I still feel desperately attracted to. Perhaps they give me a sense of history, of something beyond my self and my brief life. I would feel a thrill as deep as the archetypal archaeologist discovering Tutankamon's burial site when I would find a photo of my great grandmother on her 20th birthday (20 is a right of passage in Japan), or the high and then low of finding a photomat sleeve inside a box, at the bottom of a drawer in the storage room, only to discover a perfectly preserved, never been opened disposable rain poncho from what appears to be the late '70's by the look of the model. So, poking around old storage tins and boxes has a certain allure for me.

In this tin was a small wooden box. I opened it. It contained a weathered envelope. In this envelope was a paper with writing on it folded around something slightly bulky. I looked at the squiggles (please recall my illiteracy) and could make out my grandmother's maiden name but nothing else. So I unfolded it. Out came another, tinier package also wrapped in rice-paper. I gingerly unfolded it to reveal its contents. In my hand I saw something grey, like a bit of rope bunched up; then I noticed something fleshy and creepy among the ropey. The sensation I had was identical to the one I had seeing that bundle with teeth. Feeling slightly vomitous, I ran down stairs to show it to my mom.

"What is this?!" I asked, showing her the writing on the bundle.
"Where did you find this?" she responded, laughing a little.
"WHAT IS IT?" I said, close to hysterics, "It's Baba's umbilical cord, isn't it?! ISN'T IT!"
She laughed at me. But, I was right. I just knew it the minute I saw it. Man, how I wish I had been wrong! Why couldn't it have been a poncho! (vomit)

PS no fatties

I'm sick as a dog today and thanking god for the invention of audio books and iTunes. I'm about to sink into a blissful reverie of listening to tragic mystery as written by Truman Capote for what will most likely be the rest of the day, but needed to note these few occurrences.
1 - my mom tried to get me to take ルル. Again. And after having just read 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd' by Ms. Agatha Christie, I'm convinced that she has it out for me.
2 - the house keeper came today and this time straight up told me that I was getting fat. WTF? She still said it smiling so I still think it was not meant to be derogatory at all, but jeez. Luckily I'm on that new fangled diet called the flu. I hear you can drop pounds like mad on it.

If my ego was a zeppelin, it'd the Hindenburg

So, today when I went down to have some lunch, the housekeeper was just getting ready to leave. She's in her 70s, the one who is fast. At any rate, we were making small talk and just as I was reaching in to the fridge, she says, "I always thought you were skinny, but you're not really so skinny, are you." I froze. Yes, I've put on a few since I've been here (and yes, sadly in Japan they use the metric system); also, I don't think she meant it as a criticism, but rather some weird post WWII-type compliment in my granparents'-era-style. Needless to say, I reached past my original lunch item and grabbed for the plain, low fat yogurt. Anyway, later when I got home, I told my mom this story and she laughed with me about it. As we were laughing, the cat started to beg for more dinner, and my mom says to him, "You can't have any more. You're fat, too."
"Fat, TOO?!"
"Well, you just said it," she started to back-peddle, "We're all kind of getting fat..."

Anyway, I can't say much because, well, the scale doesn't lie. Also, I think my mom confuses empathy and sympathy sometimes (I guess they do sound alike...) and she wasn't trying to make me feel like a whale. Needless to say, I think I'm going to go on a diet. Failing that, maybe just a day long 'cleanse.'

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.

mchjd post 3, or, the world's worst stubbed toe

The pain is still so acute that I feel the need to post this. This is not for the squeamish - who knew a pinkie-toe could bleed so much. Also, why is it that whenever my mom leaves town, I injure myself? Oh, right. 'Cause I'm her crazy half-jap daughter (dot blogspot dot com).

"The Damage" - after cleaning with ethanol...ouch!


"Post-Self-Conducted-Minor-Surgery to remove skin flap"


"The Final Look"


Now I'm in pain and limping like crazy everywhere. Karma much?
In the words of Ren Hoek, "I am hurting."

If the idiot looks at the finger, what does that make the pointer?

"If a man points to the moon, an idiot will look at the finger" - Sufi proverb

The other day I poked the side of my pointer-finger with a new metal-wound low G ukulele string. At the time it didn't hurt much, so I didn't really think about it even though it bled a little. The next morning, it was sore and a little swollen. Then as the day progressed, it got a little more infected-looking and painful. I told my mom about it and she said that she had some topical ointment that might help get rid of the infection, so I put on a gob and covered it with a band-aid.

The next morning at breakfast, I removed the band-aid to see how it was doing, and amazingly it was practically healed! No more swelling or infection. So, I stuck out my finger to show my mom, and said, "Look!" She looked up toward the ceiling, to where my finger was pointing. She looked back at me again.
"No, here!" I said shaking my finger. Again, she looked over in the direction I was inadvertently pointing, searching in confusion for what I was pointing to.
"My finger!"

So, like I said, if the idiot looks at the finger, what does that make the pointer? Maybe I am an idiot; I certainly laughed like one - we both did.

another post for mchjd

So, another post for mycrazyhalfjapdaughter.blogspot.com, had it existed. This post would have begun with the story about how I got my first black-eye in the 5th grade. It wasn't anything cool, like a fist fight or anything. No. I gave it to myself. Running into a pole. Yup.

This imaginary post would continue to tell the story about my second black-eye, acquired tonight. I wish that its story would redeem me from the first one, but it doesn't. In fact, I think it only makes my case worse. Thus the appropriateness for appearing on the thankfully non-existent mchjd.blogspot.com. So, this black-eye I also gave to myself. Not a pole this time. Instead, I caught the window corner of a closing car door. Yes, it was my own door. Sad. There were many extraneous circumstances that led to the occurrence, but none of them really justify the actual incident. But luckily my glasses took the brunt of the force so the black-eye isn't too horrible (the glasses flew off my face but somehow made it through the ordeal intact. You can breathe your sigh of relief for the glasses). If you want to know the whole story, I will give you all my excuses in private.

Grammar, sense notwithstanding

This morning, my mom discovered that she'd forgotten about a student that's coming for a lesson. But, she's not worried because this student, as my mother expressed it, "She tells what I do."
"She what now?"
"She does what I...tell her." It's in these little moments that I begin to see the blueprint of how the cogs in her mind turn, and it all makes a little bit more sense. Luckily there were no articles in that sentence to be flubbed.

To anyone who thinks that my ardent noting of these tiny errors in my mom's language usage verges on cruel, know that I also make such mistakes (frequently) in my Japanese, to the point where I'm sure that my mom, if she knew about the miracles of blogs and the internet, could certainly have one: www.mycrazyhalfjapdaughter.blogspot.com. Actually, I'd better check that it doesn't exist...I'm in the clear.
An example? I recently misread a sign as we drove past a pet grooming store. The error? I misread ペット ベル (Pet Belle) as ペット ヘル (Pet Hell). You look at it and tell me it wasn't an honest (yet hilarious) mistake?

I'm still laughing.