Of the many kind Japanese kids who made that college summer break I turned japayuki memorable, I have stayed in touch only with Yuko Akimoto-Ito. She was approachably chubby when we met -- way before she turned into a gorgoeus sexy nymphet. Asar ako ... sa inggit. I stayed with her family in Tokyo and corresponded with them long after I left. I met her college sweetheart the first time I was in Japan and she met my fiance her first time in Manila. Both guys turned out to be our husbands. A lot of history between us.
Wonder where these guys are?
Naofumi Ide. He was VP for St. Paul’s University’s WAY, a student org. Cute siya.
Henichi Horii. He was President of Dokkyo University’s IAC. Ang cute … ng kotse niya. He taught me how to count to 100 in Japanese.
Tohru Shibata. He was President of Kansai University’s JISU. Kamukha ni Dolphy nung bata. He visited Manila once. He insisted on wearing a trenchcoat when we went to clubs.
Mineko Okamoto. She had the most beautiful stationeries.
Hideo Siguira. Loves our Hope cigarettes and San Miguel beer. I took him to tour the San Miguel Brewery in Polo, Valenzuela -- the guy wanted to fall on his knees and kiss the floor. He found this Mecca.
Hiro **I forget the last name sa haba**. Boy Daga – grabe ang muscles. We did Tokyo Disneyland together -- he screamed louder than I did. Poor thing had to translate everything for me -- from the voice-over at Cinderella's castle to "do not touch -- high voltage" signs. Kung hindi dahil sa kanya, baka na-lechon na ako no'n.
Bunichi Ogawa. He spent a summer travelling to Manila and India -– went home with diarrhea. (Hey, that rhymed!) It may have been the talangka my mom made him try.
Chieko Maeda. A Madonna-wanna-be. I lived with her family in Osaka. They had a restaurant and I got to try some pretty authentic stuff. Her mom wrote to me more than she did though.
Osamu Misaka. My favorite of them all. Japanese probinsiyano. All-around nice guy.
This was the cast of one of the best summers of my life.
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1.30.2004
TURNING JAPANESE
Long before Uma and Tom spoke their first Japanese line and anime went porn, I already had a fascination for all things Japanese. They are an ethereal people – this quality can be seen in their art, food and lifestyle. They exude a discipline I can only dream of emulating. And maaan, Hello Kitty rocks!
I started studying karate, judo and kendo at age 7. I could speak Sanrio Engrish perfectly ('My cow's friend will red in the grass, didn't they?') by age 11. I spent a summer in Tokyo and Osaka as a cultural exchange student (think "Sixteen Candles" -- I was the Pinoy Dong-ster) at age 17.
Considering my claim to familiarity, it is odd that watching "The Last Samurai" left me with many questions.
For instance, why do Japanese warriors carry folding paper fans to battle? It's not like it'll help them any when their arms are severed. "Dang, 'lost my arm. **fan fan fan** Aaaah, much better."
Every time Taka closes doors, why does she have to get up from a fairly comfortable squat and fall on her knees all over again before she does? Can’t she just lean over, crawl a few inches and slide the damn things shut?
Taka’s brother adopts the man who killed the father of her two children and orders her to care for him. And she wants to go hara-kiri? (“The shame is unbearable. I ask permission to kill myself.”) Your brother’s an ass and you stab yourself for it? Langya naman o . . .
When a man comes up behind a woman while she’s bathing (in Filipino movies, that usually precedes a rape scene, right?) is, in any Asian culture, a good reason bonk his head with a panghilod. What's with the "I'm sorry"? They probably let it slip because, hey, the bastos intruder was Tom Cruise.
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1.29.2004
FIRST KISS
At a Wendy's mall outlet today, I found myself watching a teenage couple (kinda hard to miss as they were right in front of me) -- no more than 14 years old -- in hushed conversation. By the looks of it, sinagot ni dalaga si binata. In excitement, the boy leaned over and urgently pressed his lips on the girl, knocking heads with her. When they finally came up for air, all the female could do was rub her forehead and say, "Aray."
That first kiss had all the makings of a bad teenage movie. Just like mine.
I waited too long for my first kiss. It happened less than a week after I turned 18 (I even remember the date – November 3). And it was more a smack than a kiss. And it meant as much to both of us as a random bump into a cement wall. You can imagine my anger as my nun-supervised, Barbara-Cartland-supplemented education had me convinced that my first kiss will be a life-changing "perfect" moment. Damn.
The kiss was preceded by a "threat" from a creep from the UP College of Economics who suffered from too much self-esteem: "Ang serious mo naman. Sige, hahalikan kita diyan e." How he could mistake that for something that would make him attractive to women, I know not.
The kiss was followed by my gagging, spitting and throwing an upper cut. Not at all the romantic comeback I had dreamed of.
And while I had spent a lifetime referring to that traumatic event as "the technical first kiss" but not the "official" one for its utter lack of meaning, the fact remains: the first time I rubbed lips with a guy, who was not a blood relative, sucked.
My only consolation is that the bully who deprived me of a decent first kiss is now (I hear) a bald, divorced loser, who can't get a woman to kiss him even if he paid up front. And I'm sure he's used to the gagging and spitting by now.
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1.26.2004
LOSING IT
I don't know what's happening to me. I keep forgetting things lately. It's embarrassing, infuriating! I think the anesthetics from my c-section have, as feared, fried most of my brain cells.
One. I went to the grocery the other day on a mission to buy prawns -- just prawns. But as always, I picked up some other stuff from aisles between the seafood and the check-out counters. When I got home, I realized I just had the "other stuff" -- the bag with the prawns I left at the cashier. 'Had to drive out again to fetch it. I nearly slugged the bag boy for snickering.
Two. My family spent the weekend out of town. I was obsessing about luggage from the eve to the early morning of our departure -- only to realize when we got to our destination that I forgot to pack my baby's formula. I drove around for what seemed like hours, looking for a pharmacy in a small town which only sold buko pie.
Three. I spent two hours at the mall today. I walked out and found I left the headlights on my car on. As I was too embarrassed to ask strangers to push my car while I jumpstarted it, I had to call my husband and his jumper cables to rescue me. Independent woman, my arse.
If this keeps up, I'll be walking around with my bra over my shirt -- just like Super G.
(For those who weren't around in the '70s, Super G was Nora Aunor's answer to Vilma Santos' Darna. She was a bike-riding super heroine in black tights and, you guessed it, underwear over everything. I guess in the entire blog world, only Batjay, Prada Mama, Ate Sienna and I would remember her.)
There was a fourth incident; but I can't, for the life of me, recall what the hell it was. Bad trip.
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1.23.2004
MY CHINESE NEW YEAR
I finally found myself in a bar again, after -- let's see, busy-with-work months plus pregnancy plus four months plus ... basta, a long time.
It was Chinese New Year and a high school pal wanted to spend the eve of her birthday with us girls -- old friends who knew each other before marriage and motherhood demanded that we acted **cough** responsibly. (My high school pal is married to a Congressman -- so that should explain a lot.)
The master plan was to 1) chuck the husbands, 2) get really boozed and 3) dance until we dropped.
Steps 1 and 2 were easy. As soon as the party got noisy, we found ourselves bewildered at how, while we were psyched about letting our hair down for the night, we weren't willing to sweat for it like we used to. While younger (this we assumed) men and women were literally splashing bodily fluids on each other on the dance floor, we opted to cut Step 3 from the plan and regress to Step 2 for the rest of the night -- anything more than that felt like we were trying too hard. And we were waay too cool for that. Or so my friends and I would like to think.
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1.16.2004
MY SON’S BALLS
“MOMMY, HELP!” My four-year old screamed from his bedroom. “MY BALLS ARE STUUUUUCK!”
Instantly, my brain churned out a scene from “There’s Something About Mary.” I was panicking as I ran up the stairs from the living room, expecting to find my little baby losing a battle with his zipper. The incessant thuds and Diego’s wailing from the bedroom did not help.
I opened the door and found him, teary-eyed from frustration, struggling to get marbles out of the mini-snooker table he got for Christmas.
If that was a Rorschach, how’d you think I did?
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1.13.2004
JUST LYING HERE
Someone I loved lied to me. No, two people I loved lied to me. No, no, two people I loved lied to me for a full friggin’ year. No, no, no, two people lied to me for a full year about something that wasn’t all that big a deal to begin with. That is, before the lies kinda snowballed to one huge pile of crap that knocked a lot of people over.
And that hurt.
If I told you I’ve never lied, I’d be lying. This all makes me wonder about that gray area that renders lying okay. There is one right? Otherwise, people won’t be lying all the time.
Is lying justifiable to protect a loved one? Is lying the commission of an untruth or omission of the truth? If you lie and no one notices, is that better than if you get caught? Is lying to someone okay if that someone lied to you first? Is lying to someone you don’t care about any better than lying to a family member? If you know someone is lying, does it make you as bad if you don’t tell?
It took a painful betrayal to remind me that there is no gray area – just black and white. Life has a way of letting us forget the absolutes: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. It’s all very simple really.
Now the bigger question remains. How do we move on from here?
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1.07.2004
JERKS
My sister is getting married in May 2004 in California. And since not all Manila-based family members and friends could fly there for the event, I had taken it on myself to put a little film together, starring my kin and those we treat as kin. I started in early December and I'm a few shoots away from getting all the raw footage I need. (See? There was a good reason I hadn't been writing as much as I wanted to.)
One of the standard questions I asked my cousins, aunts and uncles for this project was "What is the best thing about being married?" Someone said, "Companionship." Someone said, "The sex." Someone said, "Joint bank accounts." But one scary pattern emerged. The men, both young and old, found the best thing about being married was having someone “take care of them” -- cook for them, wash their clothes, make their beds -- that kind of care.
Do men in my family really think the best thing about marriage is the free maid service?
What about the romance? What about the ultimate joy from finding your soul mate? What about the adventure of growing old together?
The jerks are probably too busy checking if their shorts have been ironed to notice anything else.
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1.04.2004
ON FAST FORWARD
Father Time has been playing mean games on me.
The last three years I served with my ex-employer dragged on for what seemed like eternity. But the moment I was emancipated from corporate slavery, Time revved by like a westbound jeepney on the run from bike-riding MMDA traffic enforcers.
It didn’t fly by this fast when I was taking exams I didn’t study for. Or when I was broke and waiting for Allowance Day. Or when I was waiting for a boyfriend to call. Or when I wait for pre-menstrual water retention to subside.
Bad news: Major holiday hangover. Good news: A month of hanging out with drunken relatives and friends gave me so much blog material.
While many people dread going to family reunions where old people bore you to death about how life was when they were young, I live for the stuff! It reinforces my theory that God in his Infinite Goodness has decreed the improvement of our race. Ergo, I know anyone above my genealogical line is definitely more f****ed up than I am.
Take their love stories for instance …
My husband’s grandfather was asked to sell their cow herd in the next town. He came home with cash short of the value of one cow -- and his future wife. Apparently, the girl’s uncle (who was the local judge) agreed to let the cowherd take her away without a proper courtship in exchange for a cow. A cow. A COW! Think about that. If it were the whole herd, that would be another story altogether. Still -- it's all very Jack-and-the-Beanstalk-ala-FHM, don't you think?
Between doing my mandatory turn at the videoke machine and listening in on drunken conversations at the Magno Family reunion, I learned that my uncle married my aunt to graduate from college. At they time, they were already living together and had one child. He was vehemently against marrying someone he “didn’t love” – until he realized he could get out of mandatory ROTC (which he had been cutting) if he did.
