Sunday, May 31, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.544
Every major holiday, my apartment building in the rural mountains is
packed with families and groups from the city who want to spend some
time in nature. They use this apartment as a vacation home and the
regular residents, one of whom is me, call them ‘Visitors’. Most
apartments in the building are used by Visitors and usually vacant.
Since only few apartments are occupied by permanent residents, we have a
quiet living environment. But once a holiday comes, Visitors that are
four times as many as the residents rush in and destroy serenity. They
are exceedingly in high spirits on the day of arrival, talking and
laughing loudly, and their children are running tirelessly at the
hallway. Both the communal spa and gym are full. The jacuzzi is crammed
with shrieking kids. My usual heavenly jacuzzi turns into hell. When I
once heard a mother who was soaking in that hell cry out ecstatically
“Oh my, I am so happy!”, I felt pity wondering how disastrous her daily
life was. Visitors, especially families from the city, wouldn’t obey the
rules here. They often have a barbecue or light hand-held fireworks at
the parking lot and are stopped by the caretaker. They let their kids
use machines at the gym although a notice tells machines are adult use
only. At the spa, they let their kids swim under big no-swimming
stickers. They let them dive headfirst in a shallow stone tub over and
over again. Needless to say, they let them pee on the floor inside the
spa like animals instead of leaving for the bathroom at the locker room.
A group of young women drink cans of beer in the jacuzzi. Visitors also
take their pets here although this building is no-pets-allowed. They
unleash a dog at the nearby park. They even dump cardboard trash beside
the street. There is no end to their lawlessness and it’s hard to tell
they break rules intentionally or they just can’t obey them. It seems to
me that they come here to enjoy breaking rules. They annoy me so much
in so many ways that I always wait for a holiday to end and for Visitors
to return to the city. The closer the end of a holiday comes, the
quieter Visitors become. In the end, they go back to their city life
dejectedly with their head drooping. They pay an upkeep fee of this
building every month to use it merely for several days in a couple of
times a year. The total amount of money they spend for what they don’t
use regularly is huge. And with their money, this apartment building is
well maintained and the communal facilities are operated, which I use
every day. Since I’m an accustomed giveaway-taker, I have no right to
complain their bad manners. After they’re gone, I monopolize the whole
spa and have the gigantic tub to myself again. I spread my limbs in the
jacuzzi alone and say out loud “This is the life!” On my face is a
malicious smile like a villain…
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.543
I purchased air tickets to California six months before departure when
they were on a limited-time discount sale. Two months before the flight,
I received an e-mail from the airline company. It said that the
schedules of my flight had been changed. The changes were whopping six
hours for both departure and arrival. I was very shocked. I had already
booked and bought tickets of connecting domestic flights because the
earlier I booked, the more discounted the tickets were. Six hours was
too big to adjust my existing reservations and I had to cancel them and
get new tickets for the altered flights. Six hours late for arrival
meant that I couldn’t catch the last bullet train to ride home after
flying domestically, and had to stay at a hotel near the airport to take
the domestic flight next day. Those new domestic flight tickets were
priced higher as the dates were closer. Added cancellation fees to them,
I paid $200 more to what I had originally paid. The hotel stay added
$150 to that. One e-mail cost me $350 in total. A month before the
flight, I received another e-mail from the airline. It said that the
flight schedules had returned to the original ones. I almost fainted.
All the fuss I had made was completely unnecessary and I had just thrown
money away. It nullified $350 and time I had spent a month before, and I
had to go back to my original plan of the connecting domestic flights. I
cancelled and booked all over again, with the higher cancellation fees
and the higher-priced tickets as the dates were even closer. The total
extra cost soared astronomically. I had flown overseas many times in my
life, but an outrageous thing like this had never happened before. My
partner who will accompany me on my trip to U.S. called the airline.
Their phone line was an information number that a caller needed to pay.
They made us pay even for complaint. After a long argument, the airline
reluctantly agreed to pay for half of what we had paid extra. But there
were neither apologies nor recompense for the trouble we had been
through and the time we had spent. They didn’t let my partner talk to
the manager for the reason that he or she could be reached by a fax. The
flight is only a few days away and I’ve been praying not to receive any
more e-mail from the airline about another schedule change. Since I
will fly across the Pacific by this ‘Air Shambles’ soon, so many worries
have mounted. Do they maintain their airplanes properly? Do they
examine their pilots’ mental states? Do they let their cargo handlers
nap inside the plane too? My overseas travel has officially begun before
the actual departure with exhaustion from arrangements and troubles.
And I know I will pile up mountainous absurdities and problems during
the trip, and will have a simper smile on my face as a result of excess
anger by the time of a return. It crossed my mind that I’d better cancel
the flights and the hotels and call off the whole trip. That would save
a lot of money and energy. But something in me constantly shouts I need
to go. Something tells me that if I got cozy in an easy Japanese life,
my brain would die and my life would be over here. The sense of taking
action and moving forward feels so good. That’s why I like to go abroad
despite all those difficulties…
Labels:
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Saturday, May 9, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.542
These days, I’m busy preparing for a trip to the U.S. that I will visit
for the first time in ten years. Although the destination is the same
area as I used to live in, ten years is long enough to change everything
dramatically and make my knowledge obsolete. Numerous new hotels have
opened and their rooms are WiFi-ready. The transportation from the
airport has changed. Since it’s now a smartphone era, check-in for the
flight and the hotel is done by it. We don’t need to carry a digital
camera anymore and it turned out that an app for a smartphone dispatches
a hired car instead of calling for a cab, which I’ll definitely use
there. I got a gizmo called an overseas SIM card that converted my cheap
smartphone into an essential companion with which I could make a phone
call and get data communication in the U.S. The biggest change I noticed
above all was price hikes. Inflation in the U.S. and depreciation of
yen has soared all the prices and I won’t feel like buying or eating out
there when I think of the price converted to yen. But there are some
things that haven’t changed. A copy of an itinerary of a return flight
is necessary for the immigration at the airport to prove that the return
flight has been booked and paid. They check an itinerary copy instead
of a physical ticket, which can be forged easily if someone wants to,
and is therefore meaningless. Even so that system stays unchanged, and
I’m pretty sure so does an arrogant attitude of a US immigration
officer. I turned to my journal of ten years ago and I had written there
that I wish I could come back to the States before I die. It’s good the
wish did come true. It’s even better that my motivation to go to the
States no matter how costly it is didn’t disappear. People can become
their different selves in ten years either by dulling themselves or by
growing themselves in it. In my case, I live a life with so many changes
that I wouldn’t have imagined ten years ago. But on the other hand, it
remains the same that I’m cheap and desperately make ends meet every
day…
Labels:
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