I don't know if it is the Japanese language (which has a sentence structure of SOV, where the subject and object are often implied rather than stated) or if this is a problem that all married men regardless of race have, but most of my conversations with my wife go something like this:
Wife starts conversation while I am in another room, “Hidé-chan mumble mumble mumble.”
”What?”
”Hidé-chan mumble mumble mumble.
”Huh??”
”Hidé-chan.”
”Hidé-chan what?”
”Hidé-chan.”
”I heard you say Hidé-chan the first time!!” (Growing exasperated.) “What the did you say before and after Hidé-chan???”
”Oh. I was just saying, every time I call Hidé-chan's mother to ask if he would like to join us . . . mumble mumble mumble.”
“Ugh.”
Or.
Wife (talking to me while I'm eating potato chips) and thus all but deaf: “Mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble . . . closed . . . mumble.”
“Huh?”
”Mumble, mumble, closed.”
”What??”
”Closed!”
”What's closed?!”
”The store!”
”What store?!?!”
”The store I just told you about?”
”Huh? When?”
I could go on and on.
Now it's not so much that my wife is constantly mumbling. It's more an issue of her starting conversations when a normal human being is not expected to be listening or to able to hear. I cannot, for example, hear what she is trying to say to me when I am on the balcony and she is in the living room, or when I am in the shower, or when she is using the hairdryer, or . . . I'm not the Bionic Woman. I don't have a bionic ear.