Following on...

From the last post.

Uncle called SIL's keetai late the other night, now when a loved one is in the hospital, any late-ish phone calls are received a bit tensely, so we all were a bit alert when her keetai rang for two reasons:
1) It was 10:30-ish, not exactly late, in the old days I'd just be warming up with a few shots at this time, but on my current grandma time it's getting on.
2) SIL is actually an alien from outer space with no friends and if her keetai ever rings it's pretty unusual and most of the time her mum calling.
So she answers with a tense "Moshi moshi" and we were all ear wigging to see what the go was. You could have picked my jaw up from the floor when she started giving him fucking cooking instructions. PPPPPUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And you know, if he was asking how he could get his souffle to rise, or even asking about something as piss easy as curry it might have been forgivable, but no no, he was asking how to................................................................ drum roll please........................................................................


BOIL

A

FUCKING

EGG.

An egg! The title of the dish is pretty much self-explanatory, you take an EGG, and you BOIL the fucker! He wasn't even asking about a soft boiled egg where it can be tricky to get the white firm and the yellow gooey, fair play, there's a science to that shit. But no, hard boiled egg where all you have to do is boil the shit out of it and then run it under cold water.

I was astounded and suspect that he was actually calling with such a ridiculous question as a code for "I'm so pathetic, come and cook me something bitch!" Luckily SIL is a little slow and didn't read into it that much. I then announced that Ash will probably be able to boil an egg by his next birthday (well not quite) if I had anything to do with it, but was shushed with cries of "Occhan kawaisou!!!!" (The old bloke can't help it, poor thing!!!!)

SIL even had to tell him to not forget to put water in the pan, stupid old git probably would have just chucked the eggs in with nothing else!

Loved the comments on the last post, thanks ladies! Girl power!!!! *Gets the urge to put put on a Spice girls song and do a dance... And pipe down Mr Salary man, your foreign pampered arse is no good here...

And now, on a totally unrelated topic, here are some photos, just because it's been awhile.

Whaddaya mean this is my name, everyone calls me A-shoo-tonne!

Rain boots and backpack!!! Wooooooo!

Errr, Mum, why didn't you just buy me a cake like all the other good J-mums!? Still wanna stick my fingers in it though.....

Dear Japanese men...

Why are you such pussies...??

OK, generalising yet again, but really, lately I've been bombarded with examples of J-men, young and old, showing themselves to be like feeble little kittens, still all sticky, with no fur and unable to fend for themselves.
I'd like to say my J-guy is different, but in reality, when I was in Australia, he pretty much lived with his mum and didn't do jack shit for himself. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that if we lived further away from the in-laws, he may be able to do things for himself...maybe.
I've been taking the piss out of him lately and calling him a "Japanese shell boy," those guys that never seem to grow up because their mother and/or grandmother's hands seems to be permanently attached to their arse wiping it for them...

And I joke and laugh about it, but actually I am dead set determined that Ash will not be like that. Of course this may mean some tough love for the in-laws, but if he ever comes to me with washing that he is perfectly capable of doing himself, I will have failed as a parent and may as well really get into it and walk 3 steps behind Ryota and make Ash's bento until he's 50.

The 3 examples I've been astounded by lately are quite typical in Japan I think, the first was BIL. He's 22 and only just got off his arse and gotten a job, which happens to be about 5 minutes from our house. All good, he's functioning as a normal fucking person, woo-bloody-hoo, good for him! His sister makes his bento for him. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?? Why the hell does his sister have to make his bento?? Maybe I'm pissed because this is the same sister I have to pay 1000￥for babysitting while she's bowing down and slaving over bento because it's expected of her, but still, he's fucking capable of doing it himself. PUSSY!

Another example is FIL. We were feeding Ash one day and I asked him if he could "ching" the food (microwave it). Simple task, right? The fucker had no idea how to use use the fucking microwave. Now Japanese microwaves can resemble a space shuttle control panel, but it isn't hard to put it in and press the start button. Even stupid gaijin with no Japanese skills can bumble their way through the basics (again, heeelllllllloooooo me 5 years ago.) And I thought FIL was a bit better, he always goes on about how he left the house when he was 18 to gain his independence, so when I quizzed him on how he survived he sheepishly admitted his mum still made him meals quite often and the rest was conbini survival. PUSSY!

The final example is Ryota's cousin (35) and uncle (60-ish). Auntie was rushed to hospital last week with some kind of stomach complaint, she's having an operation today so hoping all goes well but the biggest panic was not Auntie's stomach, but who was going to take care of the uncle and cousin!!! Washing was promptly transported to the in-laws' house for cleaning, the cousin's shirts that had to be ironed were part of a 30 minute discussion "But how will he go to work with a crinkly shirt!?" meals were cooked and couriered over to the house, and the cousin even had the nerve to complain that it wasn't 'karai' enough!!! Cheeky bastard. These grown men are completely helpless without the woman of the house, this is two thousand and fucking ten, what is going on here!? PUSSY!! PUSSY!!!

As much as the men piss me off, the women really aren't helping the feminism movement in Japan, these bitches need to step up, wake up and stop folding the undies and making the bento. I told Ryota I would make bento for him on three conditions:
1) It was summer
2) Ashton didn't wake up fifty fucking million times in the night
3) If I wasn't working
But these chilly morning see me snoozing after looking after the monster all night, so sorry shell boy, no bento this winter. I think I'm a pretty good wife, but there is no fucking way I will be mothering (how ironic, I just spelt mothering wrong, and the spell checker brought up 'bothering' as the first option!) my son and husband for the next 30 years, call me gaijin, call me lazy, call me the only wife on the block not making bento, but you can suck it people, two words: FUCK THAT!

Mouldy hat. Gay hearts.

Enough said really, although I am now admiring the gay hearts within the big gay heart, lovely...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

The mouldy hat...

OK, so my first attempt at a birthday cake for Ash turned out like a big mouldy hat with two gay hearts on the side... But it's the thought that counts right? And plus I'm sure it'll taste really good, can't really go wrong with chocolate sponge, white chocolate filling and vanilla butter icing... even if it is blue...

You know those people who have no maternal instincts until they actually have the baby and then they're mother of the year, I think I'm the opposite. Seriously, before I had a baby, I loved kids, babies, and definitely wanted to be a mother, but now I have the kid I find myself going the other way!! Take Ash's birthday for instance, decided to not do a big party or presents or anything for the following reasons:

1) Couldn't be fucked
2) He still doesn't quite get that his foot is attached to his leg let alone understand the concept of birthdays.
3) He won't remember anyway
4) If I did do a big party I'd want to spend way too much money
5) Yup, pretty much just couldn't be fucked

Isn't that horrible! Anyway, after deciding to just have a low-key party, MIL took over all the arrangements which then made me feel guilty and useless so last minute I made her cancel the cake she ordered and said I'd make one, there was the usual in-law camp chorus of "Moooouuuu, taihen, yametoki!" Followed by me getting even more stubborn in my resolve to make the fucking cake. And I really have no excuses, Ash's birthday falls in the valentine's day range and there is sooo much cake making crap in the stores.

So I gave it a crack, it looks disgusting but I'm going to swap disgusting for "homemade..." I tried to do two tiers but misjudged my measurements so it just looks like a straw hat, then the blue icing I wanted to make just went to shit too, the hearts actually turned out well though! (Apart from being insanely gay).

Will report in on how the party goes tomorrow along with some photos, I'm sure someone will piss me off in some way!

Australia day

was yesterday.

My family has never been a 'how ya goin maaaatttteeee' kind of family (seeing as though my parents are Brits!) and Australia day was always just another day off work or school, we never got into the throw another shrimp (PRAWN!!) on the barbie or anything so I didn't really miss being home that much. I did get a teensy tiny bit homesick, not sure why, perhaps it's my yearly dose. I totally don't get homesick, is that weird?? Of course the family and friends missing is a given but I rarely get homesick, and I've seen people living in Japan get homesick, not pretty, for anyone. They start to despise everything Japan and get pissed off when someone says konnichiwa to them. I get pissed off with Japan quite a bit but i think it's more to do with my cynical, slightly dark, skewed view on life more than anything else...

Top 5 things I miss about the land down under...
1) Grass/space/nature/clean air- Naturey stuff.
2) People helping each other (more on this point and the Japanese cunts at my local supermarket later!!!)
3) Abundance of Thai and Mexican food.
4)
5)

I can't think of the last two!!! If anyone has any suggestions let me know!

So the reason I'm posting this today and not yesterday (apart from the fact I'm incredibly lazy) is that yesterday I embarked on a mission to the bank. Sounds simple right?
Not Japanese banks, I think most Japanese people hate banks too, well Ryota does but he's very prone to hating tedious things like banks. I usually avoid going to the bank and talking to an actual person, most of the time it's to the ATM for all my banking needs where the ENGLISH HELP button is promptly pushed. But yesterday it was a necessary evil, I had to open a bank account for Ash, I figured he has about 50 billion toys already so a bank account and a kick start to his University fund would be a better present than anything. Of course it's more than likely that mummy will dip into that account before he gets to University for necessities such as new shoes and the like...

Now I hear your cries of "Your husband is Japanese, use him for this kind of shit!!!" but I had to go by myself on principle, MIL and Ryota had already discussed it and decided that I wouldn't be able to do it by myself with a screaming child so of course I just had to prove them wrong, presumptuous bastards...
So off I toddled with Ash strapped to the front of the bike and made the 20 minute ride to our local bank. When I walked in I saw the greet n' meet lady who directs you to which bit of paper to pull dart her eyes away from me in a flash of gaijin spotting panic and then quickly return to her cheery bowing self. I asked her where I had to go to open a new account for my son and she literally breathed a sigh of relief and sent me upstairs. Now Ash is juuuusssttt about walking, which is great and all but he's not quite there yet, so he squirms and wriggles to be put on the ground but then stands for about ten seconds, maybe takes a few steps, then slips back in to crawling mode, whether it's dirty or not. I hate to say this, but I'm a dirt freak when it comes to Ash, I feel the need to wipe his mouth every bite of food and wash his hands the minute they get dirty, pointless I know, but I can't help it.

So Ash wants down, so I put him down only for him to crawl into the next boothey thing where people are talking with the staff, then I was all panicky and shit thinking, 'Fuck, I have to get him but I'm invading their privacy when I go in there!' After a few panicky heart palpitations I just grabbed his legs and pulled him back, few carpet burns, no worries.
I started to explain to the lady that I wanted a new account for my son and she had a bit of gaijin panic look in her eyes, but assured me she was eternally grateful for the fact I could speak Japanese. She automatically assumed I'd want his name in romaji, me being white and all...? And when I filled out my form with his name in kanji, she realised that her forms were all fucked up and had to change them, then I forgot our phone number and got our address backwards so fucked up my form a few times, between the two of us fucking up our forms I think we wasted at least a few trees.

After much faffing about, 20 minutes waiting, confusion over middles names, Ashton smacking another baby in the head then giggling at him, more middle name confusion, and a bit more waiting, I finally walked out of there with Ash's little pass book! Success! MIL and Ryota were shocked I did it on my own, and to be honest so was I, I seem to remember J-banks being much scarier, and that was when I used to hunt out the English speaking ones! And even though it was easier than I thought I still felt like I needed a chu-hi when I left the bank, imagine that, foreign woman on a bike with baby strapped on with booze in one hand- irresponsible mother of the year right there.

In other news, I'm having huge work headaches overshadowed by echoes of "KAWAISOOOOOOUUUUU!!!" resounding from the in-law camp. The choices are; work full time at high school, work part time at various schools, or open our own space for my private students and hopefully more to come... Very confusing but exciting time, all choices involve shipping Ash to kindy and I can't bloody wait. MIL says it's kawaisou to send him so early but the kid is so sick of me and lights up (and beats up) when he sees other kids. Well see anyway!

How to piss off the rice police.

Now for those of you who live in Japan and don't just hang out with foreigners and get pissed at izakayas every night, (heeelllllloooo me 5 years ago) you'll be pretty much aware of 'the rules of rice' in Japan, for those of you who don't or are munching down on the fried chicken in an izakaya right now, here they are:

1) The first and most important rule- Japanese rice is the king of rice, it shall not be confused with any other inferior rice such as that in Korea, Thailand and certainly not China *spits in disgust*

2) Rice should be made sticky so that if you drop it, it still sticks together, and to whatever it falls on. If it falls apart it is too dry and resembles above mentioned dirty foreign rice.

3) Japanese rice must be kept pure and not smothered with any condiment. This rule is slightly flexible if the dish is _____ don, For example, steak don is steak dumped on top of the rice.

4) Rice must be eaten with something else, it makes a meal complete, do not attempt to just eat a shitload of rice on its own, accompany it with delicious morsels such as; baked fish (WoooHoooo, eyes and all!), pickled colourful shite, miso soup etc etc.

There are many other rules when it comes to rice, I believe these are the main ones though, please enlighten me if you can think of any others..

Now as clueless foreigners go, I think I'm a pretty good one on Japanesey culturey stuff. I can sit with my legs under me (I am right now in fact), I'm a pro with chopsticks and never stick them in my rice bowl (Oooo there's another rule right there!!), I take my shoes off at the right times (see previous post), and I've learnt to say "summimasen" and "gomennasai" in between sentences to get anything I want (no brackets needed here but I'm a big fan of them tonight so what the hell).
I'm a good foreigner!!! Of course I still yell at sales people occasionally and have been known to drink too much and vomit on a few izakaya toilet floors but that's allll in the past, just call me 'bento girl,' the bento making perfect housewife of the Japanese future!!! (I know there's some nerd out there stealing my idea for a new manga right now.) I wonder how many brackets I really can squeeze into this post...

Now I discovered the other night the reaction that Obaachan gave when Ryota announced that not only had he knocked up his girlfriend of 2 months, but, SHE WAS A FOREIGN!!! AS IN NOT JAPANESE!!!!!! I'm surprised Grandma didn't actually keel over from the shock. But I was told her reaction was something like this:

Ryota: Grandma my girlfriend's knocked up.
Grandma: You stupid fucking twat, what the fuck are we going to do now, who is the dirty little slapper then??
Ryota: Her name is Corinne, she lives in Osaka...
Grandma: Corinne?? CORINNE?? What's her fucking name?? Is that fucking Chinese or something???
Ryota: No, she's Australian.
Grandma: Holy fucking hell, she won't speak a word of Japanese, what the fuck are we going to do now *slaps Ryota's head*

OK, it probably wasn't quite that harsh, but it was pretty close, I'm sure.
So Obaachan expected the worst, and I'm pretty proud to say that I pleasantly surprised her, the whole neighbourhood compliments her on the way her foreign granddaughter is the queen of aisatsu every morning, always puts her rubbish out on time and how good her Japanese is (of course they are judging this from "konnichiwa" so not the best way to judge language skills, but still.) She was also impressed that I could make bento, and listened to her rattle on (although half the time I was just nodding thinking; "what the fuck is she on about...?").
But recently, I've been breaking some rules, some very important rules, yup, you guessed it, I've been breaking some rice rules...

So for those of you living with or close to your in-laws, if they are rice nazis like mine, here are two sure fire ways to piss them off and remind them of your foreign-ness. The first, and very delicious way, is cheese rice. I had this for dinner tonight, much to the in-laws disgust, basically, you take some sacred J-rice, put some soy sauce on top, some mayo and then looooaaadddds of cheese, pop it in the microwave until the cheese is all bubbly and melted, and, you're done! It tastes really fucking good, although breaks all kinds of rice rules. I made a big-arse bowl of it too and had nothing else, so the in-laws were even more shocked and appalled at my dinner. Obaachan even muttered that it was a big waste of rice because I wouldn't be able to taste anything but cheese. Fuck it was good. (The pissing Obaachan off and the rice.)

The second biiiigggg rice rule breaker, is rice pudding. This one pissed the in-laws off even more because I was giving it to Ash too. I should have added another rule that Japanese rice is never to be mixed with anything sweet or anything that resembles a pudding. I tried to explain to them that rice pudding is actually very popular in other countries but they wouldn't have it, just kept saying over and over again that rice does not, has never and will never belong in pudding form. I made SIL try it and she even gagged a little and spat it out, it's freakin rice milk sugar and cinnamon, it's not like I put sulphuric acid in it or anything, although that gives me an idea...
They also made little grimacing faces when I was giving it to Ash, fortunately for me, he loved it and wanted more.

So the perfect, foreign-but-like-Japanese housewife granddaughter dream is dead for Obaachan, but good for me, if I go too Japanese I may start kitchen drinking, making poison curry or something crazy like always putting my husband first. Pffft, nah that'll never happen.
So I say rebel against the rice rules people, try some cheesey rice or have a natsukashi rice pudding in rebellion!!!

Why me??

Thank you for all the wonderful comments and contributions on the last "questions to Japan" post, perhaps we should all collaborate and write a book! After thinking about all the whys I have for Japan, I also got to thinking of how Japan has changed me, and how when I first came to Japan, I could have written a list of 100 questions to Japan, there are things I thought that were weird then that I've been converted to now. I think after I got married and got away from the ex-pat drinking scene I've changed even more to the J-way, I don't know if it's good or bad, better for my liver anyway...

10 ways I've done a total 180 to the J-way...

1) Cooking with the 'Japanese taste...'
When I first heard the absurd combination of soy sauce, sugar and sake I was all like, 'err, OK, would you like a side of crack with your soy sauce and sugar?!' It was such a weird concept for me, I now, however, pretty much cook everything with that combo and don't even need to measure anymore, got the perfect blend of soy sauce, sugar, ajinomoto, sake, hondashi and mirin down like a pro!

2) Taking temperatures like a madwoman...
This is even worse since Ash came along, I've mentioned this before but when I lived in Aussie we never had a thermometer in the house, where as now I'll have one shoved under anyone's armpit the minute they say they have a cold. Ridiculous, even as I type I'm vowing to throw all thermometers away.

3) Bowing...
When I was home last, I bowed at freaking McDonald's. It wasn't a huge, deep bow or anything, just a nod of the head, but enough for me to notice it and want to smack myself around a bit. It is a habit I'm going to find very hard to break if I ever go home permanently, although I find bowing very useful when there is nothing else to do, or when you want to get away from someone you're talking to.

4) Japanese...noises??
I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe them, (and no I'm not referring the crying noises J-girls make in the throws of passion) I mean the noises you make to express mild surprise: ふんん　big surprise: へええええ！　shock: えええ！？　confused shock: えっ？えっ？　and disgust: わああ！I seriously have no idea what I said to express those things before and can't imagine not using them.

5) Eating rice twice a day...
5 years ago I ate rice once a week if I was lucky and even that was the fried kind from the local Chinese take-away.. These days there is always rice in the cooker and we pretty much eat it at least once, usually twice a day. What the hell do babies eat at home?? Pasta?? Bread?? Ash eats rice with pretty much every meal!

6)Doing waaaaaayyyyy more housework...
If I was living on my own at home I would probably wash once or twice a week, vacuum about the same and wash floors and bath when I could visibly see scum forming. I now vacuum at least every second day (but usually every day) wash clothes every day, wash the bath and floors once every two days, and a whole heap of other crap that I would never have done before. This may, ok, definitely change however when I start working full time.

7) Repulsion at "inside dirt..."
Now my house in Australia always had a no-shoes inside policy so that wasn't a huge change for me, but it was a pretty loose policy and nobody would have a seizure if an outside shoe touched an inside surface. I now have this radar that can detect any speck of outside dirt that comes into contact with an inside surface, bizarre. I also get paranoid that I will be 'that stupid gaijin' who makes a shoe mistake, it doesn't happen too often, but whenever I step on carpet of any kind i nervously dart my eyes to all the Japanese feet just to make sure I'm not fucking with the the no shoe on carpet policy.

8) Bike radar...
Speaking of radar, I can now sense when someone is behind me on a bike on the footpath, because we're not in Kansas anymore Toto, you can't just freely take up a huge footpath, no no, there is room for one person and one bike. Any violation of the one person one bike policy will result in extreme irritating bell ringing from the cranky old lady on the bike. When my mum was here I had to pretty much keep my hand on her arm all the time and guide her out of the way of all the bikes as her radar was still on wide footpath Australia mode.

9) Accent...
I never had a real strong Aussie twang, much to the delight of most students but it was definitely stronger when I first came here. I would never have said Oooo-su-to-ra-ri-aarrr or sa-ra-DA in a daily conversation but I've seriously forgotten how to say some words without sounding like a posh twat with a speech impediment.

10) Taking and appreciating a bath everyday...
I rarely took baths when I was at home, I now take one everyday and I think I will even when I don't have to with Ash. When I was home with Ash on holiday I would jump in the bath with Ash and my parents said they never got in the bath with us, just filled the bath a bit and stood above and washed. I think my reply to that was incredibly Japanese, I gave them a horrified look and said, "But the baby gets cold!! And you'll get a sore back!!! And nobody can relax and 'boil'!!!" I think I actually used the term 'boil' too...

So there are only 10 of the ways that Japan is getting her clutches on me and converting me to the J-way, there are lots more that I'm sure I don't even notice. Anyone else been changed by the place they lived???