To salvage what’s left of the babe’s Japanese language skills that is heavily overshadowed with English lately, I concocted a little game while we are stuck in morning traffic on her way to school. The game is so simple but her reaction to it is very amusing, it is enough to perk me up the whole day!

I start by asking her the English equivalent of words in Nihongo (then vice-versa):

Mom: “What is kuruma?”

P: “Car!”

Mom: What is “isu?”

P: “Chair!”

Mom:” mado?”

P: “window!”

… and some other words I can think of at that moment. She is brilliant to remember most words, to my surprise.

Then, while looking at the glorious blue sky, I asked her, “What is sora?”. Sora is the Japanese word for sky.

She was puzzled, downright problematic that this will be the first word that she can’t answer. My daughter has some tinge of pride with things like this, she won’t accept defeat so she begged.

“Hint, hint, mama!”

We were at the backside of the car and sitting by the window, she on my lap. I pointed to her the skies, my fingertips touching the car window.

She screamed,

P: “I know, sora is dirty car window!”

Our car window (and the entire car body) is very dirty right now because of sporadic rain. Those little raindrops that contain specks of sand made tiny little white dots all over.