Akiko's journal#4

I watched an interview between Jay Leno and Kristen Bell. In their conversation, she mentioned about her nicknames which she wanted people to call her. It was when she was three and half years old. She hated her name “Kristen”, so she didn’t answer if people called her “Kristen”. After that she decided on her first nickname. It was “Smurfette” which seemed to come from a cartoon “Smurf” and be Frenchified. I thought that she said “Small Fat” but it wasn’t. It is funny if she really said so, but it never happened. Her nickname story reminded me of stories about my nicknames. When I was little, my brother called me “Akiko-boo”, which stood for “Akiko pig” or “Akiko fat”. It is because I was a little fat compared with typical Japanese girls. He doesn’t call me “Akiko-boo” anymore, but one time he told my mother that he felt sorry for me because the reason I was fat was from her genes. It is really mean but, at the same time, it is funny to me. Another one I had been called was “Domingo”. It came from a song title which was sung by a Japanese famous band. The title of the song is “Itoko no Domingo”, which means “My cousin Domingo”. When my friend started calling me “Domingo”, I wondered and asked her why it was “Domingo” and where it was from. She explained about it. She told me that I was like the “Domingo” in her image. I couldn’t understand because I didn’t know the song and also I wasn’t sure if the song really existed or not. In fact, the song exists although I have never heard the song yet. She and my other close friends called me “Domingo” and after that I went to a high school and there, some of my friends still called me “Domingo”.

---