That's mama-san to you!

So remind me, where were we? Although I have not yet penned the third and final chapter to the Event of the Season, aka the wedding of Baby Mama and Daddy, we all know how it ends, with a wee babe, which is what makes shotgun weddings so predictable! Well, Baby Mama has finally earned her name and she is truly a mama now. The beau and I finally made the pilgrimage out (up?) to Saitama to see his small niece and BM for the first time since the wedding. Obviously she is just darling (the child not Baby Mama) and when no one was looking I tried to get a few head sniffs in without scaring them into thinking the large Whitie was trying to suck the small defenseless Japanese baby in through her (tall) nose. Someone needs to bottle that scent, stat.

We took some pics and oo'd and ahh'd and all went out for dinner. BM is nice but I don't think we will ever be super close, not least of all because she lives in Saitama. I was obviously on the look out to see how she would behave towards me seeing as she is now the daughter the beau's family never had WITH an official ring AND an official baby (collect them all!). I can chalk part of my keen observation skills up to being culturally curious but really, I have a vagina with an A-type personality and an axe to grind. You figure it out.

Part way through a conversation about my solo expedition up north over the summer, BM is talking about some "mama," and it takes me a couple seconds to realize she is talking about the beau's mom. And a couple seconds more to feel totally scandalized. The beau and BD call their parents "papa" and "mama" as I have noted before, but I could not believe that this trollop with a baby accessory was calling her (our/whatevs) mother-in-law by the common "mama." I used to avoid calling the beau's parents anything at all, which is pretty easy breezy in Japanese, and if pressed, I would call her "okaasan," which is perfectly acceptable and decorous. I managed to keep it all smiles and grace through about six more beers and then on the way home I let the beau, the poor man, have it. Did you hear her call your mom "mom"?!? What the fuck is up with that? Even I don't call her that! Wah wah wah all the way home.

Being diplomatic and not possessing a vagina, the beau explained it away as her simply imitating what BD calls his parents. Do call me out if you happen to know otherwise, but Excuse Me? I don't see any Japanese ladies calling their mother-in-laws (excuse the wordiness but I refuse to use the initials that plague wedding/family chat boards. Slash I don't get most of them.) "mama." I wonder if BM calls her that to her face! I'm still pretty skeeved about the whole thing, trivial and petty as it is, but I feel like I have put a number of years of work into this family and BM just waltzes in after a night of unsafe sex squawking "mama." Alternatively, we could just call it what it really is: plain old competition of the female variety.

I have enjoyed a few years as the white (but still perfectly acceptable) de facto daughter to these people, which frankly is not hard when you are licensed to wield a kimono and your competition is an endless parade of underage girls who couldn't show you a breast if you paid them. Now within the span of six months I have been practically ousted from my position of privilege by a floozy from Saitama with incredibly fertile eggs. This is of course a gross exaggeration given my frequent emails with okaasan and my solo maiden voyage north, but as someone who may or may not produce the two crowning jewels for any woman in this country to be worth a damn (marriage and babies, natch), I'm starting to schvitz under my ta-tas a little. Everything was rainbows and lollipops when I was the only girl on the scene with my somewhat understandable Japanese and adorable interest in regional Japanese festivals, but now they have a Real Live Japanese Daughter (spawn included), I'm starting to feel a little put out. It didn't help matters when okaasan sent me a photo a couple weeks ago of the wee babe with a message indicating that her and otousan (or "papa" if you are a biatch from Saitama) had recently visited Saitama for a night. As much as I would like to think Saitama is far far away from Tokyo, it actually isn't. Obviously, being child-free means I have nothing to entice them to come to Tokyo. Only time will tell and while I work myself out of being a complete sook I will think pleasant thoughts about disposable income, travel and the intoxicating smell of tissue paper holding some new item of clothing.

We will see in coming weeks (shit is going down at the respective casas from whence Geisha and the Beau sprang) whether BM dares to call the beau's parents "mama" and "papa" to their face. In the unlikely event you were wondering, she calls me Geisha-chan. I can't help but wonder if she will ever call me "onesan" like a good Japanese family member because although she is technically older than me, my attachment to the beau, the oldest son, trumps age (ha!), making me the older sister. I've heard her call the beau "oniisan" so I don't know what kind of racket she is running but in her defense, she is dealing with an unwed whitie of questionable status. Maybe I should suggest she call me "whitie" from now on and we call it a day.