Okaasan's timing with gifts is not the best.
Not her fault at all. Just sadly, the way it is with busy working people: i.e. me.
Twice now on a Monday she's come home from the department store after hula dance and brought a bag of traditional Japanese cakes - very sweet, rice and bean paste little concoctions in the shape of peaches or plums or flowers.
I come rushing in between classes to feed cats, rest the knee and check e mail - and she presents me with the cake and wants to start making Japanese tea so we can sit down and appreciate the genius that is a traditional Japanese cake. Not actually a tea ceremony of course - really tea powder and a whisk in a big bowl-like-cup.
But it would still take time. And of course it would only be polite to sit and chit-chat.
But at 5 pm on a Monday this is impossible for me.
I'm in thru the door with screaming kittens who need FOOD! PLAY! TOILET BOX CLEANING! and then I am getting stuff for evening classes...and by 5.45 pm I am out again.
Not a time for Okaasan and Oyomesan quality ladies time with tea and a sugary plum-shaped cake.
I feel sad. I tell her I'll eat it later after work. But it feels like a rebuff to her gift.
And even more sadly: as I was cleaning out the cat toilet box last night....Chichi broke open the cake packaging, wrestled it all to the floor and started eating the thing! I'm sure over-sweetend rice isn't good for him. He kind of slurped the delicate plum shape into a green blob.
So I had to throw it away. And luckily Okaasan didn't seem to remember later on so I didn't have to fake out why I couldn't eat it in front of her....
* The kitten drama....probably over-hyped on sugar...Chichi got out of the screen windows after I'd gone to work. Yujiro came home to find one cat missing and the other going mental. He called me. I had to leave my long-suffering students and drive home...we walked around the streets calling and rattling a food bag.
Luckily after 30 minutes Chichi came home.
Big relief all round.He does actually know where home is. Until now we've only escorted them round the garden and street by the house.
I drove back to my classroom - told the students I wouldn't charge them for this non-class...and finally got home again at 8 pm.
And finally: had a glorious weekend away with a friend in central Hokkaido. So here are some Hokkaido Spring pictures!
Taisetsu mountains from Biei
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