Friday, September 27, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.487

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I don’t change my hairstyle a lot. I’m quite particular over it, but once my inflexible details are materialized on my head, I stay that way for a long time. The problem is the length. Since I’m a cheap person, I keep frequency of my visit to a hair salon as low as I can. As a result, I need to have my hair cut short at every visit to make the next visit further. But it’s not a case that the shorter the better. Because my favorite particular hairstyle is feminine, I need to keep some length. That causes tug-of-war with a hairdresser. When I go to the hair salon, my hair has usually gotten quite long and the hairdresser has to cut it more than ten inches to the shortest possible length for my style. He or she is always unwilling to do so. Although I request loud and clear, they try to make sure over and over. Then they bring an extra mirror behind my head. Showing and pointing my hair on the back, they still make sure the length I ask for. Despite my repeated confirmations, my hair ends up longer than I requested when it’s done each time. A hairdresser once told me that girls sometimes cry when their hair is cut short. I suppose those experiences make them reluctant to cut hair drastically. I totally don’t understand those who cry just for an undesirable hairstyle. There is too much to cry for in this world beside a hairstyle. My mother used to want me to wear a boyish hairstyle. While my younger sister had long hair, I wasn’t allowed it and my hair was always short like a boy. I got defiant and made my hair long when I was seven. My mother persistently told me to cut it, but I wanted to wear long hair for once. My uncle lived with us at that time. He saw our battle over long hair every day and said that he would cut my hair in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. He said it as a joke but I took it as a serious threat. I had suffered from insomnia and his remark made it even worse. I was too afraid to sleep, thinking he would come in to cut my hair if I fell asleep. I usually lay spreading my hair on the pillow but had lain hiding my hair tensely for some nights. Now, I can enjoy a feminine style as much as I like. I went to a hair salon the other day. A new hairdresser unusually cut my hair to exactly what I asked for. It has finally gotten short and I feel tidy and refreshed…

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Saturday, September 21, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.486

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When Queen Elizabeth II came to Japan a long time ago, she paid a visit at an imperial villa located in my hometown. A procession of their cars passed on the street near my neighborhood. The small hamlet I used to live was swallowed by this huge event. People were agog to get a glimpse of Queen of England and that was the talk of the town. They had their relatives over just for the procession, which my family also did. I was a child who was a big fan of a teen-boy group called ‘Zutorubi’. The group was a pop idle of the teenage girls. Its name ‘Zutorubi’ came from what is pronounced ‘The Beatles’ upside down. As the name implies, it was a comic group rather than a handsome boy group. My mother never approved of me being a fan of them. When the time for the Queen’s procession approached and my whole family including my relatives and my grandmother, who had a bad leg and usually didn’t like to go out, were excitedly about to leave the house, my mother noticed I didn’t prepare to go out. I was sitting in front of the TV. The procession time coincided with my favorite TV show of ‘Zutorubi’ and I chose ‘Zutorubi’ over Queen. Naturally my mother gaped at me when I said I wouldn’t go. “Are you out of your mind? It’s Queen Elizabeth!” she said furiously. “It’s the chance of a lifetime! You can see ‘Zutorubi’ every week!” Still, there was no comparison to me between that week’s ‘Zutorubi’ and once-in-a-lifetime Queen. “You will regret this for the rest of your life!” My mother left taking a parting shot. Literally all residents in my hamlet gathered alongside the street. Even the bedridden people were carried out of their houses to see Queen. It was quite certain that I was the only one that stayed at home. If a burglar had been working in my neighborhood at that time, he or she would have had a good haul. When I finished watching the show in rapture, my family came home. They told me they got a glimpse of Queen’s face and how beautiful she was. My mother threatened that I made a grievous mistake and not seeing Queen would harm my life in the future. I didn’t understand how, and still doesn’t…

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.485

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One of fun places to visit in my childhood was my mother’s parents’ home. I liked to see my grandparents and my cousins. My mother’s sister, or my aunt, had succeeded the family by taking her husband into the family as a son-in-law of my grandparents. Although every visit was fun for me, constant domestic disputes were rampant in the family since three generations lived together under one roof. Every time the dispute aggravated, they turned to a fortune teller. Strangely, the fortune tellers almost always attributed the problem to their dining room, particularly the position of the stove in the kitchen. One fortune teller said that the place for fire in the house was wrong and they remodeled the kitchen to move the stove. As their disputes weren’t settled, they asked another fortune teller for help. They were again told the direction of the stove was evil and redid the kitchen. They had repeated this process for numerous times and eventually the kitchen got back to exactly what it had originally been. They heavily relied on not only fortune telling but psychic things overall. When countless kitchen remodeling didn’t stop their disputes and a fight between my grandparents and my uncle got really ugly, he cut my grandfather’s cherished persimmon tree in anger. And soon, my uncle began to complain of a pain in his leg. The pain was too severe for him to walk or to sleep. He saw a doctor, who couldn’t find anything wrong in his leg. Because the pain was felt like his leg was being cut with a saw, he was convinced that it was caused by a curse of the persimmon tree he had cut. He and my aunt called an exorcist for purification, and his pain was gone in an instant. To me it seemed, and still does, that remorse simply caused the pain. The rift was never mended and their house, although it had accepted every piece of fortune tellers’ advice for good luck, burned to the ground twenty years or so later. By the time the new house was built, my grandfather and my uncle had passed away, and my grandmother and my aunt had been in the hospital. They never lived together again, so the disputes finally ended…

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Friday, September 6, 2013

Hidemi’s Rambling No.484

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When I was five or six years old and visited my grandparents’ home, an acquaintance of the family’s showed up. He is good at fortune telling, at least known to the family so. My grandparents’ family deeply depended on fortune telling for almost everything, including my mother’s marriage and the building of their new house. They excitedly brought me to the man and asked him to see my future. According to him, by just looking at someone’s ear, he could tell the future. Surrounded by almost all members of the family, I was made to show my ear to him. As soon as he saw my ear, he shouted, “Oh! This is an ear of a family’s successor!” I had never seen him before, and was introduced to him only as a child related to them. But in my family, I had been already looked on as a successor because I was a firstborn and there was no boy. Since the man uttered an accurate situation, they were so impressed and said in unison that the man surely could see the future. I, on the other hand, was shocked. Succeeding my family meant living at the same house with my parents and bearing the same last name all my life. While I had been told I would success the family, I still had clung to a little hope of freedom and secretly enjoyed imagining my future. Although I had only a younger sister so far, my parent may have a baby boy in future and then my secret wish would come true. I could choose my husband by myself and could live wherever I want. But when the man declared I was destined to be a successor, I saw my hope crushed. I felt all doors of possibilities slammed shut. Now I knew where I would live, what my last name would be, and even which grave I would be buried in. While I despaired, they congratulated me joyfully, as if good news were delivered. “Good for you! You are a successor! It’s your destiny!” Decades later, the man’s fortune telling proved wrong after all. I left home and live where I want. My last name is unchanged all right, but of my own free will…

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