Countdown to THE trip

Two weeks and counting.
Actually in 2 weeks it will all be over.
The trip to Okaasan's hometown and family.

She, of course, doesn't know anything about that. We hope. Think.
Fairly easy. We usually don't talk about DS's annual trip to party with his friends until the day he goes: "to a national ski teachers' meeting in Tokyo". Okaasan has accepted that lie and his absence quite happily for a couple of years.

This time his trip will turn into the Happy Family Trip as Okaasan and I fly to Tokyo a week later to join DS for a) he and I going to a concert and b) Okaasan going back to her roots and family.

But we aren't telling her until it is necessary, because she and we (mainly I) don't need to stress of her getting in a tizzy about the trip. 3 days notice is enough.

So. We make plans while Okaasan is oblivious.
He bought the souvenirs to send ahead by delivery company to all the family members we might meet, or who might know we are in town. Japanese custom - LOTS of gift giving. 
I'm all primed with the air ticket details.
My student who is a taxi driver is all primed with pick up information to get Okaasan and I to the airport bus stand, and then 3 days later pick us all up at the airport.
DS has the tickets for Elton John concert and all the hotel details.
Okaasan's sister in law is organizing the hotel and the family dinner.
DS goes off to meet his friends in the Tokyo area next week, leaving Okaasan and me as a happy twosome for six days.

In the final countdown:
I'm getting some of Okaasan's clothes washed/cleaned ahead of time so she can panic over clean clothes about what she needs for a two night trip
I'm booked in for a hair cut.
I've booked HER in for a haircut next Sunday afternoon - which will give me a few hours to get her clothes in final order.

And on Sunday evening next week I will tell her that DS has a surprise.
I will hand her a letter from DS (so she can keep all the information straight) - and announce:
"Hey! You and I are going to Tokyo in 3 days time!! You need to put a few clothes in a bag."

It won't be that simple......
His letter will tell her that
* The souvenirs have all been bought and sent
* You don't need new clothes for a simple family dinner
* You only need clothes for 3 days

And we'll try to leave any mention of Okaasan's old house (where useless brother lives) until....we can think of a good enough excuse for why this trip isn't going THERE.

Oh, about useless brother.
I casually mentioned to DS about who might come to the family dinner. Brother and his wife, a sister? A sister in law? The useless son/brother....

"Err...I didn't tell him. He has diabetes, he has XXX, it's not good for him to eat a lot of food..."

What the Fuck???

Men can be so, so dense sometimes.

Of COURSE useless brother should be invited! This is probably his last chance to meet his mother before she dies! He never comes here. He hardly phones. She probably won't be physically or mentally able to do and enjoy this kind of trip in future.
Whatever the man's failings as a son...err...adult human being...he IS her son and for his sake and her sake they should meet if at all possible. A child and mother relationship is important. Never mind coming to the funeral when she dies (as they all will I am sure) - NOW is the time to come and spend a few hours with the living person.

I couldn't believe the man-of-my-dreams could be quite so highhanded, stupid and dense. And I told him so.


Anyway, at the moment nobody has been able to contact UB - so maybe he won't come. Which will be a real shame.

Hey ho. Strange family.

Okaasan drifts along, sleeping/eating/the occasional walk/lots of TV.

We notice more and more little strange things creeping into almost every day.

* She is rearranging the toilet mat again. Sometimes level with the toilet,sometimes with the door frame. Sometimes at an angle touching both! Obviously it bothers her - that this mat is in the wrong place....but what is "wrong" changes daily.

* Had a saga with a lost kitchen knife, I asked Okaasan if she had it in her room ( because she peels apples while watching TV), but she was amazed that a knife may have somehow migrated anywhere near her...and kept offering me the TV remote instead...then came to the kitchen and tried to show me how to cut chestnuts with a carving knife....
But surprisingly - 20 minutes after I'd got back from the local store with a new knife - Okaasan had remembered long enough what I had been hunting for and found it under all her stuff.

* Oh...and trash.
She goes out often with scrunched up newspapers in her handbag....containing trash to throw away. One day it was toe nail clippings,another day a rotting shrimp from the lunchtime box a few days before.
She has two trash boxes in her room - which she uses. She also (occasionally) puts things in the kitchen trash boxes.

Not sure why she thinks it is a good idea to take trash out of the house in her handbag :-)

And so.
She is getting out for a walk sometimes.
Not far. 
Hope she will HAVE the energy for a whole airport/Yokohama hotel/trains/Kawagoe and family thing.

Hope I have the energy for it too......

Okaasan returneth

She's back.
And not so happy.
Which doesn't look good.
But she had a haircut in her old hometown.
Which IS good.

Yujiro finally brought Okaasan home after 6 pm. Her flight arrived at Chitose at 2 pm, but of course she hadn't eaten any lunch so they had to sit and eat lunch at the airport and then come into town by train and finally get home.
She scurried into the kitchen and her room, darting around like a stressy fly.
Not warm friendly, excited, happy at all.
How was the wedding?....... Eh? So so I guess.
Was it good food? French? Japanese? .......Food? Well, French I suppose.

Yujiro said the surface complaint about it all was that Okaasan felt her brother and his wife were not so friendly to her, maybe because they thought our family money gift was too small.
Sounds familiar?!!! (yup! paranoia central first stop again).
That old "these people don't like me, for some reason which I've just concocted in my mind".
This brother is Okaasan's favorite, nice younger brother and his wife. They are actually good people.
But of course - it WAS their son's wedding day. I am guessing they were a bit preoccupied!
And we are sure the Y100,000 money gift was enough. It wasn't that at all. Of course.

But somehow Okaasan has felt slighted.
Maybe it's because the whole thing was a confusing, tiring experience. A big hotel in Tokyo. Crowds of people she didn't know. Distant relatives who maybe SHE didn't recognise. People rushing around. Two nights in a hotel bedroom. Rushing to catch planes and trains. NO time to visit her old house (Yujiro and his brother really cocked up on that one I feel, but maybe it was best).

Anyway. She sat down on the carept to open the suitcase and spread some stuff around.
I took the opportunity to say: "Oh, while you were away, there was some of your laundry still in the machine, I put it all in this drawer for you. Is that ok?" and I opened the drawer and showed her the neatly stacked piles of pants. Maybe there were 40 pairs of clean pants.
"Ahh, thankyou, thankyou. Hmm, so many?"
(Yup...you've maybe never seen them all gathered together in one place like this, but you DO have an awful lot of pants!!).

And I retreated to start dinner preparations.
We ate together as 3 again.
But I could cash in my I Have A Sore Stomach And Can't Sit Down Too Long card...and escape upstairs after 30 mins.
And Yujiro said soon after Okaasan was safely asleep on her sofa.

Mission Accomplished.
I'm guessing more things about this trip to Tokyo will emerge over the next few days.
But for now it's done.

and me? My body?
I spent a quieter day. But I think my "quiet" was maybe too much sitting on the sofa or sitting in the computer chair. My stomach muscles ached in the evening.
Today I am going to lay down more.

And Yujiro - sweet, sweet man that he is - has done battle with the ANA website and has MAYBE got me an airticket to London late October for Y72,000 using airmiles.

Time to lay down.

She's GONE!!!!!

OKaasan has Left the Building.
We are wonderfully, deliciously, estatically HOME ALONE for the first time in almost 2 years!

It's so good.
Last night we sat across the table from eachother (I usually sit next to Yujiro, both of us across from O), and we ate cheese fondue, and drank wine and played pop music. And after eating we sat back and chatted about things. It was so good to just sit and relax, sit and make eye contact with eachother and sit and chat.
We confessed that when O is there we are both trying to get away from the table as soon as possible, she eats slower than us and forgets what she still has in front of her anyway. We both tend to start clearing the table, putting leftovers in fridge boxes, de-tabbing beer cans etc - all displacement activiities so that we don't have to sit and sit and sit there....usually I escape with laundry or cats or fake phone calls to England and Yujiro washes dishes with Okaasan hovering around the kitchen with Japanese-tea-in-the-making-bits.
Dinners with Okaasan are very boring. Family duty.

But last night we relaxed. I didn't eat too much cheese fondue in case my digestion system went into shock, and I drank a small glass of  wine.
Normal life ;-)) until Monday afternoon......
Well, as normal as you can be with a 6 cm gash on your tummy....
it kind of limits the running naked round the house and wild sex games.
But late September in Sapporo it's probably best to put on a sensible sweater, some more socks and forget about running naked anyway...

Yujiro got Okaasan off to Tokyo safely.
She somehow managed to pack a a small suitcase, with constant reopening and checking to make sure she had everything. She made piles of clothes all over the room as if going for an expedition, and was constantly asking: Why am I staying in a hotel? Where is Hiroyuki? Where is the wedding?
But apparantly in the past week she had done some preparation for the wedding by taking clothes to the dry cleaners. But...no haircut. She went off to Tokyo looking wild and straggly.
I really think I'll just have to take this haircut topic in hand and book her an appointment somewhere. She seems to have lost the ability to make the decision to do it, make an appointment and go along to it. Of course in her talk on the topic: There IS no good hairsalon in Sapporo. It's only the 5th biggest city in Japan...

Anyway. Off she went. I stood at the door and waved her out. Reclaimed my home. Yujiro took her to the airprt and arranged for the stewardesses to treat Okaasan as an Accompanied Person, so there was less chance of her getting lost.

And then we settled into our Weekend Alone.
I stayed in my pajamas all day. Watched TV, ate chocolate (still at 54 kg!), protected my stitches from the cats with a cushion and drifted.

Yujiro got several phone calls from his brother about Okaasan: yes she arrived in Tokyo, yes she was ok...and then later in the evening: Does she have a coat? We can't find her coat and she doesn't know if she came with a coat!

Ha HA! NOW Older Brother - and other family members - are realizing How Okaasan Is. Realizing What We Do. Finally. Most of them probably haven't actually spent any time with her for about 3 years...so the difference in her mental abilty will be noticable: the constant checking questions, the confusions and the not-quite-connecting-to-it-all.
Yujiro already primed Older Brother that he must make sure Okaasan goes to the toilet regularly and he must control the amount of alcohol she has access to.
We can both imagine how she will be at a day-long wedding party in a strange hotel with crowds of people. It'll be confusing with her. And I fear she will have toilet accidents and lose things. And drink too much. I hope Older Brother and other family members look after her.

NOW they are gonna work for 2 days!
And we are going to relax.