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Whew! After many miles on the road and in the
air, I am safely back in Japan. The long drive from Dallas to
San Diego was a little bumpier than usual, with an alternator
belt problem and a flat tire along the way, but we managed to
get home in the end, and in time for my flight, thank goodness.
We had great fun in Texas, enjoying many treats we not available
in California (to say nothing of Japan), from chicken fried
chicken to black-eyed peas and fried okra, along with our
all-time favorite Texas original, Shiner Bock. I'd like to say a
very warm thank you to everyone who came by the con to say
hello!
The Japanese are often fond of the mix of
Japanese and foreign features found in "haafu", people
who are half-Japanese and half-Western. Due to an odd social
engine called the Myth of Japanese Uniformity -- which causes
Japanese to believe that they all have virtually the same
features despite the fact that there is a great deal of
variation in skin color, hair color and other important
characteristics among people here -- the Japanese sometimes seem
to treat "haafu" individuals as being
"special" and place them on a bit of a pedestal. Many
famous "talents" make use of their blended features in
building successful careers on television, such as actress/model
Rie Miyazawa (half Dutch), singer Namie Amuro (a quarter black),
and Anna Umemiya (half American). Japanese often consider "haafu"
to be some sort of ideal of bi (pronounced "bee,"
meaning beauty) -- for example, the fashion doll Licca-chan,
loved by Japanese girls since 1967, is "haafu"
herself, the daughter of a Japanese fashion designer and a
French musician. Part of the mysterious air surrounding "haafu"
might be tied to the difficulties the Japanese have with foreign
languages. My half-Japanese kids are the envy of the other
parents at our new school, who seem to think that they are
perfectly fluent in English, having gotten it automatically
through my mitochondria or something.
Want to know a Japanese joke? In Japanese, the
word for Prime Minister is souri (pronounced sori but with a
slightly elongated first syllable), which sounds like the
English word "sorry" to the Japanese. Sori, a
similar-sounding word, means "razor." Japanese kids
have a stupid saying that has endured for decades: "I'm
sorry, hige sori [beard shaver], jori jori [the sound of rough,
unshaven whiskers]." If you're ever talking to a Japanese
person, and they apologize to you for something, come back at
them with hige sori, jori jori! [HEE-gay SOH-ree, JOE-ree JOE-ree]
and watch them jump out of their shoes in surprise.
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