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.

our parents never faced this kind of vexation as youths

Skype+Parents must yeild equal parts hilarity and abject frustration. Like I love how we were troubleshooting with John's parents, on their maiden skype voyage trying to get audio and video to occur and they typed into their mood bubble thinking it was the chat window. John got them the webcam for mothers' day '09. When we log on to skype to this very day, the bubble next to his parents name says "You bought the damn thing!"

But this isn't mycrazynocalinlaws.blogspot.com

One day my mom gets a new Dell laptop with a built in webcam, which I'm excited about because I figure it means that my days of playing IT to my mom's skype are finished. So I call her and say let's skype. She turns on her computer and I see her log in to skype. I call, she answers and lo! My mom on the video! For a split second only, though, and then she is replaced by a very worried looking white Scottish-fold kitten with green eyes and human teeth.
I stare at my screen in bemused amusement. Then, this kitten begins to move: the head tilts back and forth, its eyes look this way and that, its mouth moving without any words audible. Clearly this thing is trying to communicate with me. I call my mom on the phone and try to talk her through getting rid of the cat. But now I can hear her voice matched up with the motions of this worried cat and it's freaking HILARIOUS and I can barely focus on anything. But as amazing as this kitten-mom is, I need to try and fix the problem, which is hard because my mom doesn't know what she did plus her skype is in Japanese and I have no idea what any options might even be called. So I google 'turn off cat video skype' and what I learn is: this cat thing is called an avatar; it is specific to Dell computers; and that there are many forums where people are trying to find out how to turn off the cat avatar from their parents' skype.

I guess solidarity means something: my mom is no longer alone in this world and, just as importantly, neither am I.

a different kind of HD

Japan is switching over to a completely digital television system by the year 2010, so many companies are urging their customers to upgrade their systems and equipment now. Because of this our TV channels recently changed and we now get things like Discovery channel and Discovery HD. We'd had just had the conversation about HD versus regular TV a few minutes earlier, so I cracked up like crazy when my mom turned to me last night and said, "What does HD mean again? High Density?"

Cute!

People like that

The technological miracle that is Japan has things that would be useful the world over. For example, our washroom has an overhead light, of course, but the mirror over the sink has its own florescent lighting that allows you to see every flaw in your skin clearly, as well as a heater for the mirror so that it won't fog up. It is brilliance that only costs two light-switches extra. Well worth it.

As some of you know, I've been enjoying James Thurber's short-stories lately. He had a line about an aunt in the story about his various misadventures with cars that I felt, had I been a great writer and able to make good sentences like this one, would have worked well in the June installment of mctm, Wishful Thinking. Here is the line:
"She enjoyed the hallucination, among other things, that she was able to drive a car."

This guy who died almost two decades before I was born surely had a way with words that pummels my funny-bone like a sledgehammer. Anyway last night as my mom was getting ready for bed, brushing teeth etc in the washroom, I read her some of the more hilarious excerpts from this story about cars, "Recollections of the Gas Buggy." One recounted how he had taken his suddenly overheating car to a mechanic who fixed the problem:
I was standing outside the car, staring at the dashboard and its, to me, complicated dials, when I noticed to my horror that one of them registered 1650. I pointed a shaking finger at it and said to the mechanic, 'That dial shouldn't be registering as high as all that, should it?' The garage mechanic looked at me with the special look garage mechanics reserve for me. It is a mixture of incredulity, bewilderment, and distress. 'That's your radio dial, Mac,' he said. 'You got her set at WQXR.'

"The world really does have people like that," my mom tells me. This from the woman who asked me this morning if she could send a fax from our fax machine to our fax machine. "Um, yeah," I think, "you are one of them." I clearly state this fact as she comes out of the washroom laughing lightly, and turns off the overhead light.

But the washroom is still illuminated. I tell her. She goes back, clicks a switch and comes out again.

The light is STILL on, so I tell her again. She looks back in surprise - she'd obviously switched off the defogger but somehow didn't notice the light still on. I think it dawns on her at this moment that she really is one of those people and I swear we've never laughed so hard. She switched off the light (for real this time) and slowly walked past me, doubled over in laughter with wheezing sounds coming out of her throat and went to bed. I then followed suit.

Confounder confounded by confoundee

On Tuesday morning, my mom was multi-tasking, talking on the phone and surfing the net simultaneously. I learned later that she was trying to look up directions to a museum on the impossible-to-navigate Japanese internet. I don't know who they've all hired as their UI advisors, but they should all be killed. Or failing that, at least fired. I know that this entry took a harsh turn right away..... (hello dad....).

Anyway, something was evidently not going right, so she turned to me and wrote me a note on a piece of paper then pushed it toward me. It said, "map." I had no idea what that meant. I was completely confounded. So, I decided to confound her back, by using some of my recently acquired KY-style Japanese. Underneath her words I wrote, "I.W." (which, if you're too lazy to look at the link, means "Don't understand a thing"). But, unfazed, she continued chatting on the phone and turned back to the computer. She then typed the letters "I.W." on her key-board and waited patiently. Of course nothing happened, at which point she turned to me with a half-scowl, like I'd purposefully deceived her or something. It was around this time I was able to piece together what was actually going on. Once I did, you know I laughed like mad.

I still have no idea; it is still hilarious. Barbara.

We all hate spam so when my mom created a new email account I advised her to use her old one for on-line purchases etc as an attempt to avoid future spam. Apparently she forgot to use the old address when she bought that sheet music recently, and so is receiving ads from that company at her new email. Not spam yet. Just junk mail. So, I told her that usually those kinds of emails are easy to stop. "Scroll down to the bottom, there will probably be something that says 'click to unsubscribe.' "

So, I watched her scroll and I watched her face as it inched closer and closer to the screen, searching, before turning back toward me with that blank expression. I knew something good was afoot. I waited. The blank expression continued and then finally, in that perplexed voice, she said, "Barbara?"

I have no idea but it was hilarious. I'm sure she scowled not that I could tell through my tears of joy. Then the cat meowed, and she said to him, "It's not funny, is it," but I think his meow was in solidarity with me. He knows. My mom believes cats have the mental capacity of a 10-year-old because she saw it on TV one time (I'm not sold), so I also know she knows he knows - it was hilarious.

Like a kid at Christmas, starry-eyed and full of joy

This story begins a few days ago when we met in Shibuya; she was looking for some sheet music and a CD, I was blowing off steam with some retail therapy after a visit to the US embassy (not to worry; I am not being deported). I bought a delicious smelling oil which improved my mood a lot; my mom's endeavor was fruitless. But, the next day she proudly told me that she had bought the sheet music on-line. Apparently I wasn't satisfactorily amazed because she said it again. "I ordered it. On-line. By myself. With a credit card." I suppose it is a feat.

Anyway, I then asked her if she had looked for the recording she was looking for, but she hadn't. So I opened ye olde iTunes and searched for the Mozart piece wanted and lo and behold! if several don't pop up. She was interested in one of them, so we downloaded it - it was a "Masterpieces" compilation from Vanguard and coincidentally had 2 pieces she'd recorded with the Yale Quartet in 1968! She has the LP but thought she'd never listen to it again, so was super excited that it was on the collection. I told her I'd burn the CDs as soon as they were done downloading.

"Will it take 2 hours to burn?" she asked. I assured her it wouldn't be long. I think it took 10 minutes for the 2 CDs. "Where did you get 2 hours from, anyway?" I asked. "That's how long it would take to play the pieces, so..." was her answer.

Epilogue - She listened to the CDs and her eyes shined like a kid beholding a magic candy machine or something. "It's soooo amazing!" she said, "It sounds as good as if I'd bought the CD at the store!" I could attempt to explain to her what digital means, 0's and 1's, but why ruin the magic, right?

insanity in action!

When my mom hits some technological wall, like the error message on her fax machine this morning, if there's nothing I can do to help because I can't decipher the squiggly lines the Japanese call writing (yes, I'm almost totally illiterate. Don't laugh!), it's interesting as an exercise to just observe, like a scientist, and see what she will do next.

Today's observation revealed that the subject's first step toward problem-solving is to try the failed action several times in a row. As each action yields the same (unfavorable) results, the subject will make frustrated noises and raise her palms upward in the gestural version of "What the hell?" and utter the discontented expression "Nandenanoyo!" which translates in the most insufficient way into "Why!"

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Obviously my mother qualifies under Einstein's postulation, but I don't know how I think I'm exempt when I've always flicked the light switch up and down rapidly and repeatedly once the bulb has clearly burned out. I suppose I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Technology 7, or, Laptop Viagra

My mom's old student/IT man came over last night to finish setting up her new computer, transferring data and things. This morning, encountering a problem, we clicked 'restart' and waited. "It's taking so long to shut down," my mom commented, so a few seconds later I asked if it was still trying to shut down.

She replied, "It shut down and now it's trying to get it up."

I started laughing immediately, and she said, "It's not funny..."
"It is," I insisted, tears welling up in my eyes. "Do you even know what that phrase is usually used for?!"
"Yes."

A side story about her student (whom I call "The Professor" since he knows random facts about just about anything) is that last night my mom was telling him about my blog and he asked me what the URL was. As I said it, he typed it in to the computer. A moment later I got a blank stare from him and he said that it pulled up an error screen. What?! I thought, but as soon as I saw the address bar, it all made sense. Here is what it said: www.myclazytokyomother.blogspot.com. So close, and yet, so far...

Technology 6

"Something is wrong with her e-mail machine"

When she said this, I had a sneaking suspicion she just meant her friend's computer, but then again this is Japan! Maybe her friend really had an e-mail machine. So giving my mom the benefit of the doubt I made some clarifying inquires.

But, no, my gut was right. She meant computer.

Technology 5

I forget why it even came up, but my mom was saying this morning how she wished she still knew someone who knew flag signals like this but in Japanese, obviously. I guess she learned it once when she was little. Now I assumed that, as that link may have shown you, this kind of flag signaling probably had some kind of military origin, so I asked if she knew what it used to be used for.

"Well," she said, "this was before there were cell phones..."

I think of all the youth in Japan currently spending every waking minute texting from their cell phones and then try to imagine what life must have been like when my mom was young. I guess, you never left home without two handkerchieves.

Technology 4

She's catching up to me in her quickness, I must say. This morning she was using her new computer and I heard her making frustrated sounds; then she suddenly started laughing. Of course I had to know what it was all about.

"When I moved the mouse up on the table, it would go down on the screen and if I moved it down, it went up on the screen and I didn't know what the problem was, but I just figured it out: I was holding the mouse upside down."

Does life get any awesomer than this story? I submit that it does not.

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.

Technology 2

My mom just called technical support for the company that made our heaters to ask them how to put the heater in her room on a timer. She tried to figure it out from the manual but couldn't do it. So, apparently the guy tried to talk her through it but got frustrated and said that it would be faster if he just came here and showed her in person. She asked how much it would cost, and he said even if he has to do it for free, it's easier for him to just come over and do it rather than try to explain it to her over the phone. Somehow this is funny to me.

Technology

So, I ended up fixing the photo in photoshop and putting it on a CD for my mom. I handed it to her, and she holds it upside down, then right side up asking me "which way?" I looked at her blankly and then remembered once having had a conversation with her about which side of a CD the information was written on. She always thought that the information must be on the side with the printing on it since each CD had a different picture or words printed on it, thus - in her mind - different music and digital information. I think at the time the conversation was about how she should put CDs upside down if she was just going to leave them out so that they wouldn't get scratched. This is what she was asking me when she said "which way;" just double checking that she wasn't going to accidentally scratch the important side.

“When it comes to throwing away paper, how far do you go?”

I just started laughing when she said this, because, do you know what she meant? Apparently she was wondering what I shred and what I just throw out – she has a friend who shreds any mail that has her address on it. I think that’s pretty extreme. I told my mom that I shred things with account information on it, but that’s about it. She said she’d like to do that, too, and pointed to a huge stack of papers on a chair that apparently need to be shredded. I asked her if she HAS a shredder, and she made a cranking motion with her hands. Apparently, she has a manual crankshaft shredder. “If I spent all day and night shredding my papers that way, it would take me a month to get through all the papers I have to shred.” Apparently, having stacks and stacks of papers all through the house is a viable alternative.