Neo-Japanese
Tuesday, 17 April 2007I finish all of my sentences in text-book Japanese out of habit. My exclamations sound like the guttural mumblings of a old and grey Osaka fish monger, while my stuttering when trying to find the right word sounds like a Japanese valley girl. Being immersed in the local Okinawa dialect doesn’t help much, either. So I’ve given up on trying to blend in with any common vernacular and started to redefine my own.
Most of it is based on weak puns, simple rhymes, and alliteration. But it tends to do a better job of describing the local life around here than standard words and phrases. The two current favorites are “bikuri baba” and “jiko jiji.” ‘Bikuri’ means surprise, and ‘baba’ is a diminutive for grandmothers. ‘Jiko’ means accident and ‘jiji’ is a diminutive for grandfathers. Both terms were lovingly coined as I nearly drove over two senior jay walkers the other day, but what made them stick was the sight out of the back window of our apartment.
The empty lots around our apartment don’t stay empty for long; the tropical weather and frequent rains make sure of that. Thus, to fight back the ever creeping jungle, a local bikuri baba has taken it upon herself to weed whack her family’s empty lot to sculpted perfection. But the bikuri in the situation is that the baba is hunchbacked, wears a checkered kitchen apron, and the weed whacker has a circular saw blade attached where the nylon string would normally go. Maybe a better name would be grandma Rambo.
The local jiko jijis aren’t much better. Though they’re not usually working in the fields, they all seem to have a bicycle (called a mama chariot) that is at least as old as they are. To watch jiji ride such a bicycle, you’d believe he was battling typhoon-force cross winds. Weaving back and forth, he covers more lateral ground than he does moving forward. Which wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t riding perilously on the side of the street.
Do senior citizens on the island have a death wish? Or do they just enjoy cheating death? Okinawans are known for their longevity, and until recently the oldest living person was an Okinawan bikuri baba. Sometimes I wonder what they’re thinking, and wonder if they know what nicknames I’ve given them. And then I try to imagine what nicknames they’ve given me.
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