There isn’t much for the staff to do at my guest house in Higashiyama. Ace, the young lad (well, my age), spends the afternoons and evenings playing Counterstrike on the computer behind the reception desk. His aunt, the sweet and motherly lady who runs the place minds the shop from morning to early afternoon, her repetitive past-time of choice being knitting. A peaceful smile etched on her face, her eyes squinting up and a big laugh gasping out of her every time I pass. Today I notice she’s working on a tiny hat.
I point at it and ask in Japanese 101: “Knit-u?”
She giggles, nods sharply and then mimes, with the odd ‘Nipponised’ English word in her vocabulary, that her sister is having a baby today.
“Baby. One, two.” She counts out on her fingers.
It’s her second baby.
“Oh congratulations!”
“Will you visit her today?”
Awkward giggles.
“No no no…”
Oh no… not on talking terms?
“Hokkaido.”
She pulls her arms apart from each other like she’s laying out some pizza dough and her head shakes from side to side.
It’s too far away to visit.
We stumble through the conversation word by word. She spits words out in one attempt, two, then grasps them on the third. Her English is far better than my Japanese anyway. Google translate helps. As does speaking English words in a Japanese accent and adding ‘u’ or ‘o’ at the end.
Biru – beer.
Cuttu – cut
Hottodoggu – Hot dog.
Nitto – knitting (I took a wild stab at that one and it turned out it’s right).
“Ushi”. “Many cow.” “In Hokkaido.”
I think there are many cows in Hokkaido.
“Many cows in Ireland also!” We’re making common ground.
“Sister. Married. Hai.”
She does that love heart thing that Gareth Bale does when he scores a goal with her stubby knitting fingers to confirm my understanding of “man – married”.
“Many cow.”
She counts out “One, two, three hundred cow,” making big gestures with her hands like she’s plonking building blocks in front of a child, carefully and slowly enough so he can follow.
Ah. Her sister has many cows in Hokkaido.
I tell her my dad has many cows as well and her eyes submerge into her fleshy, beaming smile with a proud “OHHHHHHH!!!” The sound rises and falls in a long, graceful wave.
Characters tapped into her smartphone and it comes back with
“dairy farming”.
A few seconds of thought and she suggests “milk…cheese… dairy?”
“Hai.”
I get ya.
I show her what I hope are the Japanese symbols for ‘beef farming’ as my mind maps out the different ways the translation could get terribly, terribly lost. I assume that anything with ‘meat’ in it has the potential to scandalise when mistranslated.
“Pollination teacher” is returned by her phone. “My daughter”.
This one takes a bit of working out.
Pollinating cows.
I guess she’s saying her daughter is an AI woman? But in case I hadn’t, she’s doing the motions.
One forearm crossed over the bend of the other, gently thrusting in and out, complete with sounds and her face scrunching to convey ickiness as after a few thrusts she pushes her arm ‘til it’s up to her elbow. The classic schoolboy’s finger in the hole gesture on a grander scale. The same hands she uses to patiently knit the newborn baby’s hat.
Google tells her my dad was a vet, before I add “…so I know all about that!” doing the same hand-up-the-backside gesture, with all the grace of Alan Partridge working out how he can use two bars of mini-soap in the shower. She joins in again. We’re sharing a moment across language barriers over our mutual understanding of the process of artificially inseminating cattle. With graphic mime. It’s touching.
Another hearty laugh escapes her and her eyes disappear into her cheeks again as she sighs with joy. A proud mother, and now once again, aunt, she returns to her knitting, giggling again.