Sunday, December 30, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.448

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My grandfather liked to go out very much. When I still lived with him in my hometown, he was dressed with a flashy red tie to go out one day. He showed off his new tie to my parents and me while saying, “You had better dress showily to look young as you get older!” We frowned on him but didn’t oppose him as usual. I just asked him where he was going with such a flamboyant tie, and he told me that he was seeing his girlfriend. It became customary for him to have coffee with her at a cafe inside an expensive hotel. To me it sounded a date, but my grandmother didn’t care at all. His girlfriend was an old widowed woman named Ms. Tamada. He talked about her so much that almost everything he was talking about had gotten to be something related to her. He began to have her over and I saw her in our house so often. She became a good friend of my grandmother too, who usually hated others. She and my grandparents would talk for hours about mainly one topic that was how honorable and virtuous my grandfather was. As a person who doubted it, I chuckled whenever I overheard them. She raved about my grandfather every time she saw me, which was so annoying. Since she exalted him immensely, my grandparents were absorbed in her visits while other members of my family – my parents, my sister and I – felt quite unpleasant. Four of us were taking a trip to Europe, our first ever overseas travel, to celebrate my graduation from high school. My grandparents were to stay at home and they invited Ms. Tamada to see us off on the day of our departure. When we were about to leave home, she made a fuss in rapture as if we had been headed for space. She took pictures of us leaving, continually congratulated us and ruined our starting part of the trip. We really didn’t know her, yet she acted like a close member of our family. We set off sullenly by being seen off by a stranger…

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Monday, December 24, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.447

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Every now and again an old man called Mr. Kishida came to our house when I still lived in my hometown. He would show up, give me some money, chat a little while with my grandparents, and leave. That had been a pattern of his visit ever since I could remember. If he visited while I was at school, he never forgot to leave some money for me. I wondered what Mr. Kishida was, who always gave me money for no apparent reason. I asked my grandfather and found out that he was my grandfather’s best friend at junior high school. When his family was moving to a far-off town, he wanted to stay because a renowned high school he had hoped to attend was in our town. My grandfather told my great grandfather about how smart Mr. Kishida was and he could go to that school if he stayed. My great grandfather took him in and took care of him in place of is family. My grandfather and Mr. Kishida had lived together like brothers until Mr. Kishida finished the renowned high school that he successfully got in. While Mr. Kishida moved out for the university, completed it and got a job in a town where his family lived, my great grandfather passed away and my grandfather became a farmer to succeed the family. Mr. Kishida had felt an obligation to my great grandfather all those years. As the only way to repay it, he paid a visit and gave me a little money. Even after I left home to be a musician, my father sometimes sent me some money or commemorative coins that Mr. Kishida had brought for me. I got some of the Japanese first five hundred-yen coins from him. In the early days that I lived in Tokyo as a musician, I had constantly had difficulty in making a living, and one day, I had become clean out of money. I ate out at a restaurant where I was going to pay with my credit card. At the cashier, I was simply told that they didn’t take a card. The waitress knew me as a frequent customer and she let me go home to get cash. The thing was, there was no money at home either. Then, Mr. Kishida’s five hundred-yen coins occurred to me. I turned the drawer inside out, found them, and returned to the restaurant where I handed shiny commemorative coins. Mr. Kishida repaid his obligation in an unexpected way…

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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.446

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During the trip to my hometown, I passed through the Osaka metropolitan area in western Japan by bus. I hadn’t been there for over twenty years and the area has deteriorated surprisingly. It may have seemed that way just because I moved into a quiet, rural town one and a half years ago, and got used to a pleasant view of rich nature and few people. Or, a decade-long stagnating economy has taken its toll hardest on western Japan. In either case, the area looked washed-out with shabby houses and buildings cramming. It wasn’t a city in Japan I know, and looked almost like a slum. Before arriving at Osaka, I took a train from the next city Kyoto where my hometown is located. The train ride was unbelievably awful. It was a full train extremely crowded, and we were crushed into it. I had forgotten what an urban jam was like because I had usually tried my best to avoid it even when I lived in the city. It was so uncomfortable to touch and be pressed against strangers for 25 minutes. The area and its people made me feel dirty altogether. Even their strong local dialect of western Japan began to sound cheap and offensive to me, although that’s exactly the way I myself speak everyday everywhere. I started to worry about how those who talk with me feel, now that I know how I sound. My dialect is too strong to be removed by these twenty years and I don’t think I can get rid of it. While I speak in the dialect of western Japan, I wonder why the metropolitan area is getting dingy and tasteless. It could be possible that it’s not, and simply that I have become a hayseed…

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Sunday, December 9, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.445

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For the latest trip to my hometown, I took a plane. I used to fly frequently but that trip was my first flight in four years. The Tokyo International Airport that handles mainly Japanese domestic flights was an old, sterile airport when I last used it. But now, it’s a modern, gorgeous place with a lot of cool shops and restaurants. It looked more like a shopping mall than an airport. To my surprise, I didn’t even have to check in at the counter. An online travel agency gave me a reservation number when I booked the flight, and check-in was done only by typing the number on a machine. That also completed checking in for my return flight. Waiting in line at the counter has become a thing of the past there. The machine produced a receipt-like piece of paper on which a picture code was printed, and scanning it let me through the security gate and the boarding gate. I was amazed and bewildered at those futuristic systems. Once I got on board though, I saw a retrospective thing. The ceremonious service from Japanese flight attendants. They wore heavy makeup and a scarf in a decorative way, and were standing and walking as if they were models. They acted too girlie and sensual. That hasn’t changed since the time I got on a plane for the first time in my life. At that time, a flight attendant was called a stewardess and the only high-paying job for women. Stewardesses were regarded as the super-elite, and most girls’ dreams were to become one. The stewardess’s signature hat was an object of admiration. On my first ever flight, my mother asked a stewardess to borrow her hat and made me wear it to take a photograph. They have given up their hats but behave proudly as ever. Everything has changed except the position of women in Japanese society is so low that flight attendants are still the elite in Japan…

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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.444

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My parents never approve of my career as a musician and keep attacking me for it, but I visit them every second year or so as a nice gesture. When I return home, I do so without telling them beforehand. I’ve learned the tactics from too many miserable visits I made in the past, in which they had prepared numerous ways to criticize me for being a musician once they knew my homecoming. Not to give them time for a plan to attack me, I call them near their home pretending I’m accidentally visiting the area and have spare time to drop by although I’ve carefully planned the trip for months. I did that last week. It took me seven hours to get to my hometown, changing from a plane to a bus, and then to a train. I called my parents only to find out that they were out with my younger sister who now lives abroad and happened to return home. I couldn’t come home as my parents were occupied with my sister yet again. Since my partner was also going to visit his father’s home, I joined him instead. Not like my parents, his father is supportive for him and is always nice to me. But on this particular occasion, his father criticized our ways of living as musicians. He didn’t stop there and began to put down our new apartment and its location even if he had never been there. I didn’t understand what was going on. Do people pick up groundless slander when they get old? I left with disappointment for the hotel I had booked for the night. The hotel was situated next to a movie theme park. In the room, my most favorite movie, ‘Back to the Future’ was free to watch. I watched it again over and over during the stay and that cheered me up. Parents used to be young with full of hope. We could get along with them if we went back time…

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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.443

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From kindergarten to the lower grades, I had suffered insomnia. I hated going to kindergarten and then to school too strongly to sleep on school nights. As the morning to go there approached, I felt more and more nervous and tense. I would be wide awake in futon no matter how eager I was to fall asleep, watching glittering patterns on the back of my eyelids for hours. Tears ran through my cheeks into my ears during those long nights. When it dawned and the room was filled with the gray of the morning, I could finally doze awhile. I slept beside my grandparents as my parents were occupied with my little sister in a different room. Before going to sleep, I would try to be near my mother as long as I could because she used to be the last one that retreated to her bedroom at night. But soon I was to be prodded into going to my grandparents’ room to sleep. I once found the courage to confide to my mother that I was having insomnia. She scoffed at it and said anyone could sleep by just closing his or her eyes. Her advice was to close my eyes. I wondered how dumb she thought I was, since I did so to sleep every night. She didn’t take it seriously and so I kept staying awake on weeknights secretly. Sunday nights were the worst. The thought that a long week at school would start next morning made it undoubtedly impossible for me to sleep. My grandparents used to watch TV in futon before going to sleep. Their favorite drama was on Sunday nights and the end of the drama meant my grandmother fell asleep. I can still hear in my ears the sad tune of the drama’s ending. My grandfather read a little after that. When the light by his pillow was turned off was a signal that he would go to sleep and I would be left alone awake in futon. One night, he noticed I wasn’t asleep in the middle of the night. “You’re still awake,” he was surprised. I confessed that I couldn’t sleep, and he simply said, “Don’t sleep, then.” While I couldn’t believe what I had just heard, he explained, “You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to.” I had never thought that way. I didn’t have to sleep! Like magic, his words cured my insomnia and I have fallen asleep easily ever since…

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.442

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I like to spend my free time at a shopping mall. The first mall I ever visited as a small child was called Rainbow Town. When it was built, people made noise about it because it was the first underground mall in western Japan -probably the first mall either on the ground or underground. The neighbors and the relatives of my family asked, “Did you go to Rainbow Town yet?” as daily greetings. My grandfather was fascinated by the concept of a mall. He often talked with wonder about what an artificial town was like and how it could exist underground. Since the mall was located in the city next to ours, my grandparents and I finally went there one day by train. Although the destination was a mall, our purpose was rather sightseeing than shopping. My grandfather kept talking about his concern over sufficient air in the underground mall, while my grandmother got up early in the morning to fix lunch for all of us. We were headed for a mall as if we were going to NASA. The mall was crowded with cool, urban shoppers, and had a stream and a big fountain along the walk. I had never seen so many shops and restaurants gathering in one place. My grandparents were amazed that the mall was so bright with full electricity and decorative with water. They also couldn’t believe that there were restaurants, which used the fire to cook, though it was underground. My grandfather reminded me over and over that people and cars were passing through above us. Because all the benches were taken, we sat on the rim of the fountain for lunch. We had my grandmother’s handmade rice balls and Japanese tea from our canteen there. Right in front of us was a nice restaurant where many customers had their decent lunch and a good time. My grandfather said to me triumphantly, “Do you know how much they have to pay in there? They’re stupid!” We left for home without eating or buying anything at the mall. My first mall experience was dismal, but I love a shopping mall so much still…

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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.441

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As I take the communal spa in my apartment building twice a day, I regularly see the staff of the building or other residents. One morning, I bumped into a management staff member in the hallway. I had seen him for several times before, but never talked with him, except to exchange greetings. On that particular morning however, he said hello as if we were so close each other. He continued, “Gosh, I didn’t recognize you because you look so different today!” I had no idea what he meant since I always wear the same clothes and the same hairstyle when I’m headed for the spa. “Do I look different?” I asked, and he said, “Totally, you’ve changed!” Completely perplexed, I got out of mysterious conversation, convincing myself that he mistook me for some other resident. A couple of days later, I was taking the Jacuzzi in the spa when a woman approached me. She deeply appreciated me and said, “Thank you so much.” Again, I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t even recognize her. According to her, she had taken a bath too long the other day and fainted here, and I had helped her, which I never did. I told her that it wasn’t me but she seemed pretty sure it was me. I denied for a few more times and she left still looking dubious. I was puzzled by these two incidents and concluded three explanations: there is my look-alike in the building, or I’ve developed a split personality, or I like the spa so much that I’ve begun to sleepwalk there. Meanwhile, the woman, who claimed I had helped her, has been very friendly to me since then and chatted all along when she finds me. I would rather be alone and quiet like the days before…

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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.440

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The family of my grandfather on my mother’s side used to be a landlord of the area and has lived on the ancestral land generation after generation. My grandfather succeeded the family when he got married with my grandmother. In the end, four generations lived together in the big house: my grandparents, their daughter and their son-in-low, their grandson and his wife, and their great-grandchildren. They had constant disputes but nobody could leave the house to keep their old family style. My grandfather was unconscious for weeks in the hospital when his time was drawing near. A couple of days after his family decided to turn off his life-support system, their house was burned down to the ground. It was my grandmother who caused the fire. A candle she lit on the Buddhist altar made something catch fire and spread all over. No one was injured but the police questioned my grandmother persistently. She went to the hospital to see my grandfather and repeated loudly in his ear, “The house was burned down! It’s all gone!” She told my mother that he heard her though he was unconscious, and he would die soon along with the house. As she said, he passed away the very next day. I attended his funeral, worrying about how devastated my grandmother would be, because my grandparents were such a nice couple. On the contrary, she was fine and somehow gleeful. I wondered if their relationship was my grandfather’s one-sided love. Considering her life, it’s possible that she had hated the house all those years since she married into the family. By the time the house was being rebuilt, she lived at a nursing institution with her daughter who had suffered from dementia and no longer recognized her mother. She herself gradually had health problems and spent the rest of her life in the institution. She died there and never lived in the new house…

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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.439

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My great-grand mother was a geisha. She grew up in a remote village surrounded by the mountains and left home for a big city to become a geisha. She had a daughter by a patron and died right after she gave birth. The daughter was my grandmother on my mother’s side. She didn’t remember her mother at all and didn’t know her father, either. No one still knows who her father is, except that he was a rich and powerful name. She was taken in and raised by her mother’s parents at their home in the mountains, but for various reasons, she was soon handed over to one relative to another. She lived in countless different homes of her relatives and changed her school for innumerable times in her childhood. At every school she attended, she was the smartest honor student and had never dropped to second. One of her relative’s homes where she lived for a while was my grandfather’s. Years after she left, he told his parents that he wanted to marry her. She got married with him at the age of sixteen and moved in his house again as his wife. She settled down and got her family at long last. But only five years later, my grand father was drafted for World War II and she was left with her two daughters, one of which is my mother, and her in-laws. A former prodigy with no home and no parents found herself working hard as a farmer everyday in the fields with her in-laws…

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50 Big Ones: Greatest Hits / The Beach Boys

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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.438

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The other day, I went to a supermarket that was five stations away by train from my home for the first time. I’d wanted to shop there for some time, as I heard about its low prices. The store was spacious and clean with a wide assortment of low-priced merchandise. It had a deli food section and a bakery too. What excited me most was its small cafe space. There were a few tables and chairs near the entrance with a machine that let customers draw two different kinds of Japanese tea and water, both iced and hot, for free! In addition to free tea, customers were allowed to eat or drink whatever they purchased at the store except for alcohol. It was a perfect place for me to eat lunch by saving money. I strolled around the store in rapture selecting what to eat for lunch at the cafe space. I was thinking I would go with deli foods or freshly baked bread when I noticed my partner’s somber face. He wanted a better place for lunch and suggested just having a snack here before looking for a restaurant. I agreed and started to hunt for a snack. I found a croquette at 30 cents each and bananas at half price because they went bad a little, and declared my findings to my partner triumphantly when he was choosing an expensive pastry from the bakery and a pack of cafe au lait. Questions poured out of my mouth one after another, such as “Do you pay for a drink even though there are free drinks waiting for us?” and “Do you dare pay much more money for a pastry than these bananas, which are 50 cents for four?”, and eventually, he gave in. We had 30-cent croquettes and half-spoiled bananas over free tea at the cafe and he looked unhappy while I enjoyed so much. We had lunch at a burger restaurant nearby later. The place had a cool atmosphere but the burger cost about three times as much as McDonald’s although it was a fast food restaurant itself. The lunch didn’t sit well with me, but my partner looked so happy…

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Friday, October 12, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.437

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I was a fan of a local country band called Bugs Bunny when I was in junior high school and they were going to give a performance at an open-air municipal auditorium. Their performance was one of the series of the local traditional musical event. It would start at 6:30 p.m. while my curfew was 7:00 p.m., which meant I needed an exceptional permission from my parents. My father readily gave it, telling me that he used to go to the event himself when he was young. He guaranteed it would be so much fun. I was changing my clothes before leaving home on that day when my mother asked what I was doing. I told her about the event, and she said madly, “ Are you out of your mind? Your curfew is seven o’clock!” I explained that my father had allowed me to go, but she kept saying, “No way! You can’t go!” I called out to my father for help and she demanded angrily, “Did you allow this? Did you, really?” He said yes in a faint voice and got under her fiery anger. I begged him to persuade her, but her definite noes drowned out his “It’s rather an educational event.” At last, he said to me, “You can’t go because your mother says so.” That was the last straw. I screamed at him, “You wimp! You can’t decide anything by yourself! I hate you!” I called my friend crying, to tell her that I couldn’t make it because my father was my mother’s servant, and stopped speaking to him. On the next evening, he came into my room hesitantly. As I ignored, he put a bag on my desk and said “Sorry.” After he left, I opened the bag and inside was a book of poems, which I had wanted for some time. I had talked about it casually at dinner and he remembered. He gave me a gift instead of confronting my mother. A few years later though, his character changed completely for an unexpected reason. It happened when I decided to be a musician after high school. Until then, he was a gentle father who liked music so much that he recorded my singing for practice when I was little and bought me records, a stereo and a guitar. But since I chose music as my career, he has been mean and spiteful to me and been opposed to my decision to date. Who would think one career choice reverses someone’s personality?…

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Long Wave / Jeff Lynne

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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.436

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That my mother wouldn’t want my father to do a nice thing to me meant that he constantly did what she didn’t like. The junior high school and the high school I attended were far from home and it took me an hour and a half to get there by bus. My parents were farmers and they left home at dawn in summer. But the wintertime was the low season and they didn’t have to leave so early in the morning. My father sometimes drove me to school so that I could have breakfast for which I often didn’t have time and had to skip on a busy winter morning. My mother would keep nagging and saying, “You’re being spoiled!” all the while I enjoyed my breakfast. And to my father, “You’re spoiling her! She will come to no good!” until we got into the car. One morning, my father and I found quite a few bags of bean sprouts scattered on the road on our way to my school by his car. It was too early in the morning for other cars to run, and the bags seemed to have just fallen from a delivery truck. We got out of the car and picked up the fresh bean sprouts. We were so happy to get them for free. But it made my mother furious. When I came home from school, she was still in a bad temper and yelled at my father repeatedly all day long, “What should we do with so many bean sprouts? They will go bad quickly! Do we eat them for each meal everyday? Everything goes wrong when you drive her to school!” My father was so obedient to my grandfather and my mother, and basically did whatever they told him to do. What he did spontaneously for a change aroused their anger. He was a pushover for them and I’d never seen him decide anything by himself. When I saw ‘The Simpsons’ for the first time, Smithers looked awfully familiar to me. My father was exactly like him. I spent my childhood with Smithers in my house…

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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.435

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My father was an attentive father. He treated me so nicely throughout my childhood. My mother didn’t like how he treated me because she believed he was just spoiling me. Every time he did a nice thing to me, she got angry. To avoid her anger, he had learned to give me a treat without her presence. Near my home was a temple famous for the five-storied pagoda, and a fair was held along the approach to it once a month. A relative of ours had a booth at the fair and my father helped carry merchandise every month. He never forgot to get some toys for me there when his work was done. There was no greater pleasure for me than seeing him entering the house, waving some play house items to me. Of course he was scolded by my mother when she caught it. I usually slept beside my grandparents and I had suffered from chronic insomnia in my childhood. Once in a while, I had a happy occasion to sleep with my parents when my grandparents were on their trip. On one of those occasions, my mother was taking a bath when my father came to futon next to me. Since my parents didn’t know about my insomnia, he was surprised I was still awake. He thought I couldn’t sleep because I was too hungry. Not to be caught by my mother, he stealthily got out of the room, sneaked into the kitchen, made a rice ball and brought it to me. He told me to finish it before my mother came out of the bathroom. Seeing me devouring it, he said that he had never made a rice ball by himself before and didn’t know how. It was surely the ugliest rice ball, but the most delicious one I ever had. My mother also didn’t like to see me cry. She had told me not to cry because crying made me look like an idiot. While my little sister cried all the time, I tried not to as hard as I could. But as a small child, I sometimes couldn’t help it and my mother would get angry with me for crying. In those cases, my father always said to me, “You’re not crying, are you? You’re just clearing your eyes, right?” I hadn’t noticed until recently that there are the exact words in my song ‘Sunrise’. I’ve put his words unconsciously…

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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.434

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The elementary school I attended had an open house for students’ parents twice a year. My mother had ordered me to answer the teacher’s questions by raising my hand to show off in front of other parents. I was a kid who didn’t answer the teacher’s questions in order to avoid contact with others even though I knew every single answer and usually got full marks in the test. So, an open house was an excruciating event for me because to obey my mother, I had to behave in the exact opposite way to my usual manner. Other kids noticed it and began to find out that I didn’t answer although I knew it. That and the fact the teacher often appointed me as a leader to help other students who didn’t do well at school while I tried not to talk to other kids, convinced them that I had looked down on them. It seemed they told their parents about it. On my way home from school one day, one of the parents of my classmates approached me. I had been used to being spoken to by a grown-up this way. In the case like this, they would say, “You’re the smartest girl at school!” I was certain that this woman would also admire me when she read my nameplate of the school on my chest and started, “I know who you are.” But on the contrary, she yelled harshly, “Don’t behave as you do! You can’t act like that just because you’re smart and your family is rich! Stop being conceited! Do you understand!?” I had never been rebuked by a stranger before. I was only a second-grader and her enmity and her angry face terrified me. She was so furious that her eyes turned white. My eyes were filled with tears. In less than a year, I began to talk to other kids at school. The reason was not the woman, though. I had a crush on a boy in my class and wanted to make a good impression on him. A simple magic like that was enough to break my silence…

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.433

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Until the third grade, I had hardly spoken with anybody except for my family and relatives. I disliked people overall and especially despised kids around me. They seemed too infantile to me who was also a kid then. Naturally, I was the most unpopular student at elementary school. An election for a class president was held every term. When I started elementary school, my mother ordered me one thing as the most important thing at school. She forbade me to vote for anyone else besides me in a class president election. She had wanted me to be a class president so badly and believed voting for others in the election was the stupidest thing in the world. There was no need to announce candidacy in the class president election, and the president would be chosen from all students in a class. We wrote a name of a student on a piece of paper, a teacher collected it and showed the result on the blackboard. In every election, three or four usual names of popular students were written on the board along with their votes. And there was always my name with one vote. That was my ballot. I would press myself to write down my own name on a ballot with my trembling hand because of my mother’s order that was more like a threat to me. The result would be always one vote for me, which apparently told everyone that I voted for myself. Everyone would laugh at me. All I could do was not to burst into tears for shame. I just had to do that as my mother would make sure sharply I had voted for myself when I came home. From the third grade, I started talking to other kids and became popular. I was elected to a class president by a landslide in the fourth grade. All students put on a nameplate on their clothes and a president pin was issued to a class president to be put on a square of green felt under the nameplate. In the evening, my mother cut green felt, almost crying for joy. Her vanity was finally satisfied. She made me put on the president pin wherever I went. I knew people must have laughed when they saw me wearing a nameplate with the pin on Sundays, but I had to for my mother’s pride…

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Hidemi’s Rambling No.432

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This is a ramble about the bathroom and if you’re reading this while eating, I apologize. I got in the bathroom at a cafe yesterday. Although the cafe was Western-style, the bathroom was Japanese-style. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me explain a little. The Japanese-style bathroom has a shallow bowl in the floor with no toilet seat. You have to squat down when you use it, which is terribly uncomfortable and unsanitary. I loathe it. When I encounter the Japanese-style, I don’t use it and look for the Western-style that is dominant nowadays in Japan. In the cafe’s bathroom, a towel was hung beside the sink like in the bathroom of a home. Both the toilet and the sink were out of the question for me altogether. I left the cafe and went in the mall nearby which rest room was Western-style. As a germ phobic, I always carry sterilizing liquid and some toilet seat covers that the Japanese bathroom rarely equips. And I have a ritual when I use the bathroom outside my house. I first wash my hands with soap, wipe them with a paper towel, open and close the bathroom door with the paper towel instead of my bare hand, wipe my hands thoroughly with toilet paper, spray the toilet seat with sterilizing liquid, put a toilet seat cover, and finally sit down. During the ritual in the mall’s rest room, the unthinkable happened. I dropped my ring into the toilet bowl! It could have happened to anyone, but why me a germ phobic? Only two choices were given to me; either giving up the ring or dipping my hand into the bowl. And I had to decide quickly, as the train to my home was coming soon and the next train would be two hours later if I missed it. While the ring is a cheap one, I’m also a cheap person. I picked up the ring from the bowl. I washed my hand and the ring with soap frantically over and over, and spray sterilizing liquid on them amply. I consumed the time for shopping and barely caught the train. I wondered if I should have given up the ring. What if I fell into the lava for greed like Gollum in ‘Lord of the Rings’? On my way home, the station attendant didn’t take the ticket, so that I had a free train ride unexpectedly. That may have shown I didn’t fall. I’ve kept washing my hand but it still feels dirty…

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