It's Oyomesan here, your sometime-creator and general old lady's dog's body. (Is it - dog's body? dogs body? dogs' body??? or maybe dogsbody?? strange phrase anyway...)
Apart from weekly updates on the will she/won't she go to day center saga, I've been a bit slack here. That sadly means I have accepted my fate as a captive of this man and his mother, and I have resigned myself to years and years in the jungles of Japanese daughter-in-lawing. I will soon start spouting political messages supporting their cause - Don't Eat for 5 Days and Cure Everything! Don't Go to Hospitals! Don't Eat Before 11 am! Red Apples are Bad! Taiwan Bananas Rule the World!
And other such nonsense.
He is away skiing for another weekend. I am here in Sapporo. I shop. I cook. I put lunches in flasks on the kitchen table. I chat about boring stuff. I smile.
I apologise: yesterday's made-in-a-panic lunch (NOTHING in the fridge), wasn't a success. While I was at the gym and out to curry lunch with the newspaper for company...Okaasan tried to heat up the cabbage rolls again, and maybe added salt to the sauce? Too many times? She told me later it was inedible...I just smiled and apologised. Threw the rolls away.
Last night had a biggie earthquake, 6.4 magnitude, which is big for this part of Japan. So dramatic that even my cell phone Earthquake Alarm rang. But our house shakes every few minutes when the subway train passes, so at first I thought it was that. Got up to check TV, then went downstairs to check Okaasan's heater. She was half awake....kind of knew it had happened. All ok.
Oh...and THIS is mildly entertaining....I volunteered Dear Son for Residents' Association duties for the coming year...by mistake :-)
Sometime recently a R.A. woman came to the door and babbled on about something, I think I was busy cooking another over-salted dinner, so I just nodded and said "yes, yes" to whatever it was.
One week ago Dear Son gets a phone call from the Residents' Association thanking him for volunteering for the coming year to be a committee member...clear trash stations, rescue old ladies from burning homes and whatever.
Volunteer? Me? When????
He was pretty stunned.
But, accepted his duty like a trooper. Oh, the fun of having a gaijin-in-the-house-who-has-language-failings :-)
February is here.
This day, Feb. 3 is the Setsubun Festival - toss beans around the house and drive out evil spirits. And eat a long sushi roll. Okaasan found the rolls in the supermarket flyer and told me many, many times at dinner last night that I needn't cook dinner tomorrow - because the roll will be enough. Luckily for me and Dear Son, I've bought and started marinating spare ribs...so she can have a roll of rice and we'll chow down on meat.
Feb. 3. Three years ago I brought home these two little cuties....
and they found more and more cans of cat food, and ate and ate...and became these stove-hogging lords...
February.
Sapporo Snow Festival next week. Got Couch Surfing guests for that.
Okaasan will go to hula three times this month?
Dear Son will work all over Snow Festival time and Chinese New Year holidays.
I am away for a 3 day work-junket to east Hokkaido to give a speech in Japanese about foreign tourists and what they want, because I am a Trip Advisor charismatic expert...
I will go to Tokyo with some crazy friends to see American Idol's REAL superstar Adam Lambert in concert - better get out the glitter and feathers...
oh...and...7-11 Japan is now stocking British chocolate. Cadbury's Dairy Milk. In a country where popstars shave their head to apologise for being sexually-active, where judo champs rape college students and where judo coaches beat their team in training....7-11 has a ray of hope.
Once a week...only once a week......at the convenience store near the station...
I think you should have a T-shirt made that says "Taiwan Bananas Rule the World".
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