Following Bitch Ph.D., I have a story to tell y'all about the onechan and me. We were at the mall in Kashii--the place where last time we went, we all got seriously sick for the first time in Japan that I remember--and had quite the scare. I lost our sansai onechan for about 15 minutes in a large clothing store. No harm done--a nice lady working there saw her crying, calmed her down, took her to the bathroom (because she said she told her to go oshiko), got her name and age out of her (thank you, yochien, for helping us drill that into her!), and paged us. So here's what Hawthorne would say--exercising his usual artistic licence--in his nomination speech for my Father of the Year Award, describing the first words the tsuma said to me upon catching up with her and the onechan:
"Ethan, meet Wakefield."
Thank you, thank you. Next show at 9:30.
Seriously, it would have been the worst 15 minutes of my life, but during a crisis--like, say, last week when the juukagetsu imoto was choking on a slice of cabbage that onechan and I were grating for their mama that had fallen from the grater onto the floor and gone straight into her mouth when we weren't looking--I'm scarily calm, I've discovered to my relief (better than panicking, right?) and dismay (why so many crises?). Still, the one distracting thought that slipped through my crisis mode this afternoon was the mental image of onechan wandering off (to look at some of those skirts we had just gone to the changing room to tell her mama she liked, I thought, while I was fumbling with the mall stroller and our stroller and agreeing with the tsuma that imoto and I would chase onechan down--but no!) and the thought that that would be my last sight of her.
Phew. Thank god Japanese workers take service so damn seriously and that Fukuoka is so family-friendly. I am truly baka.
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