Stressful Relaxation hr583

After I completed recording the main vocals for my new song in August, I came down with a cold. I got over most of it within a week, but a throat condition remained bad. It has been persistent ever since and I still can’t shake off this nagging condition. My throat hasn’t reverted to normal yet, which inclines me to anxiety. I try to return to health by relaxing and warming myself at the communal gym and spa inside my apartment complex every day. Those facilities are free to the residents while there is a catch. Their operating hours are limited and they close early in the evening. By the time I finished working and eating dinner, I usually run out of time for going there. I end up doing the dishes and changing into a gym suit in a mad rush and dash toward them. It’s like I go through a time trial before relaxation. Then, after I’m successfully in time for the operating hours, most of the time what awaits me there is something annoying. For example, a man comes into the gym while I’m on an exercise bike and turns on the TV that he makes blare right in front of me. His girlfriend joins him later and they lie down on the exercise mat while watching rubbish before my bike. “This is the gym, not your living room! And not the place for TV!” That’s what I gulp down with effort instead of utter. I’m forced to curtail my exercise and go into the communal spa. There, the residents take their babies and infants with them. They shriek, cry and go on a rampage. The mothers let them relieve themselves in the spa not in the toilet although the toilet is right there at the locker room, and poop is often lying on the floor. “This is the spa, not the toilet! And not the place for infants!” That’s what I gulp down with effort instead of utter, again. I submerge myself in the jacuzzi with the babies who may urinate next to me at this moment. While I’m taking a shower, the announcement that tells the spa is now closing comes from the speaker with a melody of Auld Lang Syne. Now I have to finish up quickly. I rush out to the locker room, hurried to put on my clothes and make barely in time before all the lights are shut down automatically as the operating hours are over. I’m the last one left there when the spa is in the complete darkness. I’m so accustomed to it that I always bring a small LED lamp with me. “10 p.m. for a closing time is too early! Lights should be kept on at least!” That’s what I gulp down, but sometimes utter for this once, as I’m alone in the dark. I dry my hair with a dim light from my small LED and leave. My brutally hectic time of the day finally ends like this. Thus, relaxation is so hard to get. I wonder when my throat returns to a good condition…

Some Remain, Others Disappear hr582

Once a year in autumn, a road race of classic cars is held in Japan. The race starts in Tokyo, runs through five prefectures in four days and finishes back in Tokyo. It stops for the night at a certain checkpoint during the long journey and one of the checkpoints is a hotel in a small town where I live. On its way there, it passes through the desolate main street of my town. I look forward to this event and go out to see it every year. More than one hundred beautiful classic cars like Fiat, Bugatti and Alfa Romeo, some of which are about ninety years old, run past right in front of my eyes one after another on a narrow street almost within my reach. I can also get to spot a few Japanese former Formula One drivers and celebrities who participate in as proud owners of the cars. The promoter hands out small flags for this event to spectators along the street. They wave the flags to the cars and the drivers wave back. This year, I left my apartment a little early for the race to stroll around the main section of my town where I hardly visit. When I shop or eat, I usually travel to the city far from my town that is too small and forlorn to hang out. I walked around the center of the town for the first time in a year and found it more desolate. A small grocery store I have shopped for several times had been out of business. A bookstore in front of the train station was closed along with a restaurant across it. There was no sign of any new tenant at those locations. More and more stores are gone, as a small population of my town is getting even smaller every year. I sat on a bench at the best spot to see the race along the main street that also had more shuttered shops than before. I was waiting for the cars to come while looking through a race brochure with a flag in my hand, both of which I’d gotten at the town’s empty tourist information office. As it was about the time the cars were scheduled to pass, I was prepared with my smartphone camera. But not a single car appeared. I waited more and there were still no cars. And I noticed there were no spectators either. I made sure the date and the time in the brochure again, and they were correct. Since an unpredictable incident can happen in the race and a delay sometimes occurs, I waited patiently. No cars and no people showed up. It was getting dark and cold. I went back to the info office and asked about the race. The clerk said, “Hasn’t it come yet? It should be here, I think.” Because she sounded she knew nothing about the race, I assured that her info was false, which meant, the race shouldn’t be here. I must have gotten the right time, but the wrong place. I left the main street and hurried toward the checkpoint where the cars would eventually arrive. On the way, I started smelling a strong odor of exhaust that came from nothing but classic cars in these days. The race must have been near. I hurried on, and finally saw a classic car turning the intersection with an explosive engine noise at the bottom of a steep slope toward the checkpoint. The race did come to my town but used a different route. It had dropped down the main street as its route this year and the info office didn’t know that. With only few spectators even along the main street every year, the new route was outside the town center and there were literally no spectators. I managed to see the last one-third cars in the dark while I missed the most part of the race, especially fast cars. Like this, my town is gradually declining with fewer people, fewer shops and less information. I will watch the whole race next year near the checkpoint not along the main street. Unless the race excludes my town from the route altogether, that is…

Huge Absence hr581

I went to the Tulip concert the other day. Tulip is my lifelong favorite band and the reason why I became a musician. They are making a national tour commemorating their 45th anniversary. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been to several concerts every time they were on tour. They used to tour every six months, which made the number of my attendance soar. Most part of my monthly allowance was spent on the ticket. Among the five members, I was an avid fan of the lead guitarist of the band, Toshiyuki Abe. I was always enchanted tremendously by the sensuous sound from his red guitar in my youth. After I grew up and the band broke up, they reunite every five years to make an anniversary tour. I had been to several venues each time by spending costly transportation fees and staying at a hotel when the venue was too far to be in time for the last train back home. That had been my usual pattern concerning Tulip until their 40th anniversary tour was wrapped up. Although I had waited anxiously for their 45th, the wait ended abruptly two years ago even before the tour started. Mr. Abe, who I believe is the best guitarist in the world, suddenly passed away. Tulip’s 45th anniversary tour turned out to be a memorial to him, which I’d never, ever pictured happening. I wasn’t going to go to their concert this time. I didn’t want to see the band without him who had been my idol for such a long time. It would be too sad. Whenever something related to Mr. Abe popped into my mind in my daily life, my eyes easily swim with tears automatically. I couldn’t imagine how sad it would be that I actually saw Mr. Abe missing in the band and realized again he was gone. On the one hand, I thought I’d better not go, but on the other hand I was curious how the band would play without him. They announced Tulip would become a four-man band without having a new guitarist. Who would play the guitar part then? Would they change the arrangement and have the keyboard cover the part? Or, would one of the members switch to a lead guitarist? Or, would a robot stand with a guitar? I had thought of possible alternatives every day and couldn’t stop thinking about it eventually. To solve mounting questions, I decided to face the sadness and go to the concert. After I got the ticket, though, I still felt hesitant to go. I couldn’t believe I was holding a ticket of Tulip in which Mr. Abe didn’t exist. I had asked to myself what I was doing for three months. But about ten days before the concert, I began to feel excited and my heart leapt up. I was headed for the concert hall on that day with odd rapture. The minute the concert started, all my questions were answered in an unexpected yet totally reasonable way. In the back of Tulip, there were three supporting players. A supporting guitarist was understandable, but there were a drummer and a keyboardist that made up the band of twin-drums and twin-keyboards. The sound was different accordingly and for some reason, wasn’t good as it used to be. They also lost edge on vocals with no reason. The loss of Mr. Abe has had effect on the band much greater than I thought. It reduced the quality of Tulip. It didn’t sound or look like Tulip. I was disappointed and felt so sad. I witnessed the band suffered a massive vacuum. Mr. Abe’s trademark red guitar that I’d watched and listened since I was a teenager was placed on the stage and made me cry instead of exult this time. His song was played while his pictures were shown and I bitterly missed him. As the concert went on, I realized how hard the members was trying to fill in the big hole that they knew couldn’t possibly be filled in. With their desperate attempts, they tried to carry on at all costs. Their strong intention to sustain the loss and to survive as Tulip was conveyed from the stage. I was deeply moved by their effort to continue. Before I knew, I was jumping and sang myself hoarse along to their songs with other audience as I had always done at their concert. Looking back, I became a singer-song writer to be like Tulip. Now I will do anything I can to keep on until I die like Tulip is doing. Just one thing I will not follow them is to accept that the quality of my music gets poor. I wouldn’t, I hope…

A Korean Friend hr580

The neighborhood I grew up in wasn’t so good and low-income families were everywhere. While a small hamlet that my house stood consisted of well-off families of farmers, it was surrounded by poor areas where many Korean-Japanese lived. The income difference produced chronic tension. Naturally, the tension was conveyed to school and the students were divided. When I was in sixth grade, more than half my classmates were Korean-Japanese. There was an undeniable rift between Korean-Japanese students and Japanese students including me and we didn’t mingle well. It was funny because Korean-Japanese kids were born in Japan, converted their names to the Japanese ones, spoke Japanese and looked exactly the same as Japanese, except that they were mostly shabby and sour. As a custom at school in Japan, the sixth grade takes an overnight trip. Our destination was Toba in Mie prefecture, a two-and-a-half-hour ride on an express train from Kyoto. The train had four-people booth seats and each of the students was assigned to the reserved seat according to the school roll. In my booth, I had my closest friend next to me, but sitting in the seats opposite to us were two Korean-Japanese classmates. Those two girls lived in a particularly poor area of all other Korean-Japanese areas, and I had never even passed it by or gotten close to it although it was within my neighborhood. Since I had barely talked with them at school, I felt nervous and thought the trip was already ruined by this seating. But as soon as the train departed Kyoto, what I had expected was reversed. One of the two girls sitting face to face with me began to talk about her intention of becoming an idol singer. Her name was Yukiko Kimura and she declared a plan to enter and win an audition of the idol-searching show on TV when she became fourteen. Because I also wanted to be a singer, I was drawn to her talk and we were lost in chattering. Yukiko Kimura was the youngest of seven girls in her family. Her parents had so many girls in the house that they often neglected her and called her by her other sister’s name by mistake. She said if she won the audition, she would debut by her real name to have everyone remember her name. We talked on and on and had a lot in common. We mocked our homeroom teacher and laughed heartily. Contrary to my initial expectation, we got along so well and had such a good time together on the train. When the trip was over and the school days were back, our friendship was also back to where it was. We returned to each group we belonged to and barely spoke. However, every time I reacted against our teacher and went on strike, or received punishment for that and had to stand in the hallway for a long time, Yukiko Kimura was the first one who joined me and was beside me. Years have passed and I still haven’t heard of an idol named Yukiko Kimura. But I do remember her name to this day…

Phone-Phobia hr579

When I was a teenager, a smartphone era was still years away to come. I came from a large family that had one phone in the house, which meant a scramble for a phone call. It was usually a three-way battle: between my grandfather, my mother and me. My grandfather used to be the chairman of a local senior citizen club and make and receive lots of calls. Once his phone time began, it lasted forever. He would pull a chair from the dining table, set it in front of the phone, sit in, spread some kind of papers and start dialing. The stand where the phone sat turned into his makeshift office desk while my parents, my sister and I were eating dinner right beside it. The background music of our dinnertime was usually his telephone conversation that sounded totally unimportant and ridiculous. The minute my grandfather finished his phone time, the phone rang that would be from my grandmother on my mother’s side. She would call my mother almost every day to report her day. It would always consist in complaining about her son-in-low. After my mother finished listening to her endless nagging, it would be finally my turn. I used to chat with my friends over the phone for hours as a habit of a teenager. Although I did that so often, I have a confession to make. I hated it. I was really loath to talk over the telephone, to be honest. But as everyone knows, the phone call is a must among teenagers. If I had confessed I didn’t like the phone and asked my friends not to call me, I would have been instantly branded as a nerd. To be popular, I kept it secret and talked with my friends by acting happy but weeping inside. I forced myself to be funny and a class clown at school although my true self didn’t want to. At least when I was at home, I wanted to return to be myself who liked to be silent and alone. But the phone call would intrude into my home and destroy my peace. I cultivated my dislike for the phone during my teenage years like this. After I graduated and left home, my condition got much worse. The phone attack from my parents began when I started living alone in a small apartment in Tokyo as a musician. Since they opposed strongly about my career choice, they denied me, insulted me and cursed me over the phone. The ring became the most distasteful sound in the world to me. I couldn’t take it any more one day and turned off the ring. I stopped answering phone calls altogether by setting the answering machine. Then playing messages on it gradually got painful and even seeing the message lamp blinking made me sick. My dislike for the telephone had evolved into phobia by then. Besides the nasty phone calls from my parents, I sometimes got prank calls. More and more, the telephone looked an entrance to hell. To this day, I jump to the phone ring and talk into the receiver feeling ultimately tense with my hands sweating and my throat drying. Every time I see someone talking casually over the cell phone on the aisle of a supermarket, I think I’m seeing someone from other planet. The other day, I was shopping online at Amazon. When I was paying with my credit card, an error message appeared on the screen that said, “The payment was failed. Please contact your credit company”. I called the company while I was twitched with fear, my fingers were trembling and even my eyesight became blur and white. It turned out that my card had been suspended because the balance in my bank account was short. My distaste for the telephone has grown deeper…

Defection from A Negative Empire hr578

I’m a singer-songwriter living in Japan. Yet, I’m totally unfamiliar with Japanese recent entertainment. As I haven’t caught up with Japanese pop music, TV dramas and movies for decades, I don’t know any tunes, any titles and any names and faces of a band, a singer or an actor. I have lost interest in Japanese entertainment as a whole except for comedians for a long time. The reason is simple: there’s nothing worth listening or watching at all. Every single thing I encounter is rubbish and I have stopped trying to find something good. It seems that as a nation falls into decay, its entertainment perishes accordingly. The most common sales pitch for movies in Japan is ‘You can cry hardest.’ The tears in the pitch don’t mean what we shed when we are moved or touched or happy. They mean specifically the ones when we are sad. The sadder a story is, the bigger hit a movie scores. As a result, movies that center only on death of one’s beloved are overrun in Japan. That kind of movie is what I want to watch least. I prefer foreign movies which themes exist, touch me, and consequently make me cry. But Western films are not sad enough for Japanese people and every year the number of foreign movies that come into theaters shrinks. Even the Japanese comedy TV shows are aired less and less although they are the only domestic entertainment I can enjoy. I used to be an avid frequent visitor of a Disney theme park in Tokyo where I could feel like I’m visiting America. Sadly, Japanese taste has been greatly increased there and changed its atmosphere so much that I’ve long since stopped going. While less Western culture flows into Japan, more and more Japanese games and animations are going abroad. I’m afraid that the Japanese negative spirit might brainwash teens and children in U.S. through them. Thanks to cable TV I recently subscribed, I enjoy TV shows and movies from U.S. every day. Unlike domestic counterparts, good ones are abundant throughout the channels and I can easily find myself absorbed in. Zombies, devils, serial killers and the FBI come at me every night and I fight against them. That gives me food for thought, and makes my brain active and me feel positive. I’m duly aware of a lot of problems, but I can see hope exist in U.S. I suspect that’s the very reason why Japanese people are inclined more for domestic culture. They have lost hope and want to share denial of hope with others. They see themselves die with characters in the Japanese movies. I will stay away such a negative and would rather wander around cable TV channels from U.S. I intend to devour good entertainment as much as possible for my own survival. And I believe that will lead me to create good works of myself and help them be part of good entertainment. It’s not a matter of fame and money any more. It’s a matter of life or death. Well, of course it’s even better to stay alive with fame and money, I admit…

Ordinariness vs. Contrariness hr577

I have signed up for a few online survey websites and answer some questionnaire or other every day to earn small change. Other than money, there’s a byproduct in answering them. Each questionnaire has a set of answers to choose from that a survey writer thinks participants’ answers are supposed to be. I can see a trend and an opinion of a majority of Japanese people through the choices. To be honest, even though I’m Japanese myself, it’s a complete mystery to me what Japanese people think and how they live. I can understand the American way of thinking, for instance. It’s reasonable and logical, right or wrong. But for Japanese people, I often have no clue why they act or think as they do. The answer choices for a questionnaire are helpful leads to knowing them better. I take a glimpse of popular things or thoughts among Japanese people through a set of likely answers. There’s another interesting byproduct in surveys. Unveiling my true self. To save time, I answer them as quickly as possible. Choosing an answer instantly without deep thinking reveals what my unconscious mind really tells. I’m sometimes startled at my own answer, which means I still don’t know myself either. While I’m answering them, I encounter a problem quite frequently. My answer isn’t included among the suggested choices and I can’t select any of them. It’s so rare that I find the answer that refers to me or to my opinion in the long list of choices. In most cases, my answer is ‘Not applicable’ or ‘Other’. I simply don’t agree or apply to the suggested answers anyway. The choices are laid out in order of probability and none of them represent my answer. I even don’t know the items or the people on the choices that are considered to be popular in Japan. There’s no way for me to choose from what I’ve never heard of. My opinion is always in the minority. Whatever I do or think is usually shared by merely two to ten percent of all. Unfortunately, consensus is valued above character in Japan. Being different falls into disfavor. What I think and how I behave is mostly ignored or meets a scornful laugh. As a result, I feel I’m totally an outsider of this world. Maybe I’ve become a contrary person who believes most people except a few wouldn’t understand me ever. The other day, a motion to expand a parking space in my apartment complex was made. The complex I live in was initially built as a vacation home for people in the city. But recently, more and more people have been moving in to actually live here like myself. That has caused a shortage of a parking space. Some proposals for the solution were brought up, such as, to expand the parking lot by acquiring the neighboring land, to reduce parked cars by collecting fees or limiting to one car per household. Although I opposed strongly, other residents voted solidly for a motion to get land to expand the parking lot with a huge amount of money. The cost would be paid by reserves that the residents, including me, pay every month as a maintenance fee. It’s outrageous to me because I have neither a car nor a driver’s license, and don’t use a parking space to begin with. No one ever imagines a resident without a car exists in an apartment complex that is located in an absolute rural area enclosed by the mountains. My opinion that living here without a car is duly possible and thus expanding the parking lot is unnecessary was completely ignored and sneered at as usual. I wasn’t disappointed, though. I knew how things would go and this outcome is exactly what I expected. I’m used to being outside the majority…

The Influence of Global Warming hr576

I live in an apartment that is enclosed by the mountains and a five-minute walk to the ski slopes. It was built about 30 years ago, when this area was cool enough to be lived without an air conditioner in high summer. As an air conditioner was assumed unnecessary, my apartment has the structure that an air conditioner can’t be set up. But in recent years, the temperature here reaches above 91 degrees in the summer time. While I’m not sure global warming plays a part in this, my apartment is now evidently too hot to live a normal life without an air conditioner in the summer. Every day I fill up a plastic bottle with water, freeze it and use it as a portable cooler inside my apartment. It’s possible to set up an electrical cooler on the window, but it would cool only one room while it would occupy a large part of the widow blocking the view and making my apartment dark. Besides, since my apartment was designed without a possible use of an air conditioner, the allocation of the maximum electricity for each apartment is low and I would worry about a circuit breaker all the time not to have a blackout. Even so, when an unbearably hot summer ended last year, I decided to place a cooler on the window for the next summer. And as the way of the world, I forgot the heat I had suffered when autumn came. By spring, I couldn’t remember why I needed a cooler altogether. Then, summer arrived again with stronger heat. There is a communal spa in the building for the residents of this apartment complex and a cold bath is operated there every day in the high season. I used it a lot this summer. The small tub is filled with extremely cold water because the tap water is from the mountains. The water cools off my body instantly and I’m hooked with its sensation. Being submerged up to my neck in it, with my heart pumping and my teeth chattering in ten seconds, I can no longer tell whether I’m fierily hot or freezing cold. I get a scare every time that my heart might stop in this cold water. Especially in the hot summer like this year though, it was so easy for me to push away my fear of a heart attack and I plunged in it three times one evening, making it my new record. Next day, I had a sore throat and began to cough. Then I was running a fever and had stayed in bed for a week. I caught a cold by three plunges into a cold bath. I hated my poor immune system and felt wretched about myself. After I got rid of a fever and got out of bed, persistent coughing has continued to make me miserable over ten days. While I was scuffling with my cold, summer is coming to an end. I didn’t get a cooler this summer either again…

A Demon’s New Home hr575

I visited my parents for the first time since their financial difficulty made them sell their house and move into an old condominium. It situated only two train stations away from Kyoto but in the different prefecture, which meant they were kicked out of their hometown too. The moment I met them there, I noticed a big change. Both of them had turned into different persons. They used to be grumpy, gloomy and nagging all the time. But now, they were cheerful and lively. It was as if demons living inside my parents had departed and they regained consciousness. I felt like I saw my good old parents whom I’d known when I was little for the first time in decades. Even their faces had been changed somehow. My father was raving about his days of exploring his new town with childlike excitement. As he had been raised and lived as a successor of the family that had continued for generations on the same land, he had never imagined moving to a different place let alone actually moved out of the house. He moved to a new place for the first time in his life and realized how comfortable it could be. Because our house had stood in an old uncivilized area of Kyoto, everything here seemed modern and incredibly convenient to him. He rapturously talked about his new daily life of shopping at a discount store and eating at McDonald’s. He even mentioned that he intended to start new hobbies such as drawing or English conversation. I had never seen him so positive. It seemed he enjoyed his first freedom. My mother also talked about how much she liked the view from the balcony and how convenient to live in a compact apartment instead of a large house she used to live in. Only, she added every time lamentably, “But I had never imagined myself ending up my life in a small apartment.” I know too well how far the reality diverged from her plan. As a young girl, she planned to live a rich life whatever it took. So she got married with my father whom she didn’t love, and endured living with and taking care of my grandparents, all for money. In return, she believed she would live luxuriously in a mansion until she died. When I was a child, I often heard her say, “How stupid women who marry for love are! They live in a small apartment. But look where I live!” As it turned out, though, she found herself living in an apartment, being old without either love or money. “I should reap what I have sown,” she murmured with a cynical smile. My new changed parents didn’t attack me, which they used to do every time. Not a single complaint came out of their mouths. When I was leaving, my mother looked as if she would miss me. My father walked with me to the train station to see me off. In addition, he slipped me some money and told me to eat something good with it. All those things couldn’t be explained unless demons stopped possessing them. I got on the bullet train from Kyoto toward home and uttered “I’d like to come to Kyoto again.” That was what I’d never said before in my life. But I should have been careful about a wish. My wish to travel to Kyoto came true too quickly. The very next day I returned to my apartment, my partner’s brother called him to let him know his father passed away. Since his father also lived in Kyoto, I traveled back to Kyoto with my partner for the funeral only two days later. And then, three weeks later, I went down to Kyoto yet again with my partner to place the ashes of his father in the grave. I decided never to say ‘I’d like to go to Kyoto’ ever again. After his father’s death, my partner’s brother suddenly changed from a tender and modest man to a completely different person. He came up with a scheme to have a small inheritance all to himself, instead of dividing it with my partner as his father had told to. A demon which left my parents chose him as its new home and moved in…

The Crane hr574

The hotel I checked in on my trip to Kyoto gave me a discount coupon for the buffet breakfast and I had it next morning at the restaurant. The buffet had Japanese expensive dishes in addition to the familiar Western breakfast dishes, which made up the most luxurious buffet breakfast I’d ever had. As there were many foreign guests around, it produced an international atmosphere. One of the walls of the restaurant was the glass window from the ceiling to the floor. Beyond it was a small Japanese garden that had a pond with many red-and-white-colored koi fish. When I was eating delicious breakfast and thinking I hadn’t known that Kyoto had a fabulous place like this, something out of the window caught my eyes. A tall, sleek, beautiful crane came flying from somewhere and landed in the garden. Its height was about half of mine and its color was mainly white mixed with silver and black. It stood just five feet away from me separated by the window, watching the koi fish in the pond with its cool eyes. I was close enough to see each of its feathers clearly. I had never been this near to a crane before. It didn’t try to fly away but stood still majestically. There’s a myth in Japan that a crane lives one thousand years. Since it is regarded as the embodiment of celebration, kimonos for a wedding or the New Year have crane patterns. The crane standing in the garden also looked as if it had lived for a long time and the restaurant was somehow filled with a sense of awe in the air. Because this trip was the first one after my family sold and left its land that had been inherited from my ancestors over for one thousand years from generation to generation, I felt the spirit of the land finally got freedom, took the shape of the crane and flew away. And it came here to say goodbye to me. I was convinced that parting with the land was the right thing to do. It set each of my family free after all. The crane kept staring at the koi fish a long while and suddenly crouched as if it decided to pounce. I was thrilled to see if it would eat expensive colored koi fish that often cost thousands of dollars, but it returned to its previous calm position and stood straight. It repeated those moves several times and then flew away without attacking the koi fish. Goodbye, gorgeous crane. Goodbye, my ancestors’ land and its spirit. I was going to visit my parents on that day. Visiting them usually ends horribly and I had been quite worried about it this time too. But seeing the crane was auspicious and made me feel that the visit would go well. After the mystic breakfast, I was headed for a strange town where the condominium that my parents had moved in located…

The New Kyoto hr573

When I spent 40 minutes aboard the bullet train bound for Kyoto from Tokyo, an alarming notion popped into my head. “Did I miss Mt. Fuji?” It’s around this time that Mt. Fuji comes into view closely in the bullet train window. Somehow Mt. Fuji is a special mountain for Japanese people. It’s said that seeing the first sunrise of the year from the top of Mt. Fuji brings a happy new year. Many of them want to climb it once during their lifetime. They regard it as something holy and good luck. I myself try to see it every time I take a bullet train to Kyoto, and pray to it for a good trip. It was cloudy and rain looked imminent on that day of my latest trip to Kyoto. Whether the train already passed Mt. Fuji or it wasn’t visible because of thick clouds was uncertain. The outcome of the trip depended on Mt. Fuji. I felt that this trip might end terribly if I couldn’t see it, and I looked for it frantically. “There it is!” Above the dark clouds, its top section poked out clearly. “I see it! A nice trip is assured!” I was relieved and in high spirits. While I jinx it when I don’t see it, however, I’ve had horrible trips even when I saw a clear Mt. Fuji. Although I duly understand an outcome of a trip doesn’t have to do with whether I see it or not, there’s a reason why I’m nervous enough to pray to the mountain. A trip to Kyoto means homecoming and meeting my parents. Three out of every four visits, they give me a hard time. They insult me, deny me and complain everything about me. I sometimes feel my life is in danger when I’m with them because of their relentless attacks. Not to be strangled by them while I’m sleeping, I avoid spending the night at my parents’ home and stay at a hotel instead. I would rather not visit and see them, but I know it would make things worse. I couldn’t imagine how this particular trip would go especially as it was my first visit since my parents sold their house. They could no longer afford to keep their large house and its land inherited by our ancestors. Their financial crunch made them sell it where my family had lived for over 1000 years. They moved out to a small, old condominium outside Kyoto. Thinking about the situation they were now in, I couldn’t imagine their state of mind other than being nasty. The bullet train slid into Kyoto Station after two and a half hours. I stepped out on the platform for the first time as a complete tourist who didn’t have a house or a family there. To my surprise, Kyoto looked different. I couldn’t tell what and how, but it was decisively different from Kyoto I had known. It used to look grim and gloomy as if it was possessed by an evil spirit. But now it was filled with clean fresh air and looked bright. I would see all but mean people, but they also turned into nice people with smiles. I checked in a hotel and looked out the window. Rows of old gray houses were there. I used to think Kyoto was an ugly city with those somber houses, but I found myself looking at even them as a tasteful view. I’d never thought having the house I grew up in torn down and parting with my ancestor’s land would change the city itself altogether. Or maybe, it was me that changed…

Price of Greed hr572

According to my parents, I was such a sullen infant who always put a long face. I had the habit of uttering “Butch!” as if to show dissatisfaction, and I received ‘Butch’ as my first nickname from my parents. When I started talking, I was a child who constantly grumbled. My mother’s impression was that I complained about anything whenever I opened my mouth. Indeed, when I recall my childhood memories, they are abundant in all kinds of complaints I made. My mother would ask me why I couldn’t have even the slightest feeling of gratitude. She told me how fortunate I was to be born into wealth since she always boasted our family’s fortune. I was never convinced because if we had been that wealthy, we would have lived a better life in which I didn’t need to complain so much. Mostly I complained about meals, but I did about other things as well. Among them was about clothes. I was ten years old when I began to get fat. I’m short now, but I was quite tall for a ten-year-old girl back then. My mother stopped shopping children’s apparel for me and put her used clothes on me instead because I was big. I went to school every day with her clothes on that were mainly brown and mean boys called me a cockroach. I insisted to my mother that colorful clothes for adults existed and pestered her to get them, which was rejected. I frequently criticized my parents’ way of working, too. They always tried to curry favor with my grandparents who lived in the same house and were so stingy. My family used to farm and my parents worked so hard on the fields from dawn to night. And they told me we were wealthy. It was obvious they worked crazily not to earn money but to impress my grandparents. I repeatedly explained to my parents that what they were doing was completely pointless and demanded to come home early, which was rejected too. I regularly appealed for a raise of my monthly allowance. I was so persistent in this particular request because it was scanty despite my mother’s claim of our wealth. I never stopped after I was rejected for a million times. By the time I was a teenager, when I started casually “Mom,” my mother would cut me right away saying, “About money, isn’t it? No!” She told me that she would have a nervous breakdown if she heard more of my ‘Mom’. Thus, I spent my childhood as an extremely unsatisfied child. I think I’m greedy by nature. But I believe that greed can make people progress. Resignation is considered as virtue in Japan and greed is loathed excessively. In my opinion, we need greed to make changes for better. There was a line in a US TV show, “Happiness is to be content with what you have.” I think wanting more can be happier with efforts and hope. I often feel sick and have a stomachache after having too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet. As the communal spa is free in my apartment, I take it too long every day, which sometimes puts me in bad shape and lays me up. But it’s more fun and livelier than doing things acceptably. Besides, I can’t stop it because this is who I am. Being greedy is one thing, but getting what I want is a different matter. While I find more and more things I want, they are usually out of my reach. I have to face disappointment all the time that I can’t possibly possess what I want. Even so, my greed is too strong to accept reality…

Genetic Parsimony from Atavism hr571

I was brought up by my grandparents who led an extremely saving life. Although we were well off and lived in a big house back then, most lights were kept off to save the electric bill and the house was always dark. Turning on the TV was available by my grandfather’s daring permission. We would eat dinner in the poor light under a small kitchen fixture. My family had farmed in those days and what we ate were vegetables we grew in our fields. We grew some kinds for our family’s use, but most vegetables on our table were what were too damaged to be sold in the market. We ate eggplants almost every day in summer and spinach in winter. Meat seldom appeared and we lived like vegetarians. Protein was supplied mainly by beans from our fields. We kept hens that brought us eggs. Sometimes my grandmother got cheap fish at a nearby mom-and-pop store and grilled it that seemed to have more small bones than flesh. Every meal was bland and tasted terrible, as my grandmother saved seasoning. Snacks were hopeless too. Since my grandparents had tried not to waste money on them, we had only few snacks of Japanese style cookies that occasional visitors brought as gifts. They were damp and limp because we kept them as long as we could. I usually didn’t have any appetite and was thin probably owing to that eating habit. When I visited a relative’s house and ate there once in a while, everything on their table looked gorgeous. In that case, I devoured and called the house a restaurant. My relatives would wonder and ask me what I ate at home while they were watching perplexedly the way I was eating their regular meals. My grandmother spent most of her spare time sewing and mending something. She mended holes in socks and patched futons so that we could use them for a long time. I had never seen her get new clothes and she wore an old kimono every day. Her scarce cosmetics were the cheapest ones on the market. My grandfather went out by using a senior citizen’s pass for a free ride of public transportation, wearing an ancient drooping jacket and shoes with a hole. Whenever he ate out, he brought back the leftovers in a doggy bag. As a child, it was a mystery to me why they lived like that although they had plenty of money. I hated it and longed for a better life. Then I grew up and got to live in the way I liked. And now I find myself mending tirelessly my tattered socks. I’m not rich, but not that I can’t afford new ones. I replace elastic at the waist of pants, turn off the lights in my apartment as much as I can, buy and eat old food that is half price, ask for a doggy bag, and find free samples for my cosmetics. I think it’s not about saving money. I simply hate wasting. Not just money, but anything. If we waste time continuously, we will end up wasting our whole life. When I avoid wasting something successfully, I feel like I’m smart and that feeling brings me joy. I imagine my grandparents thought the same way. I gradually don’t loathe being stingy myself while I’m duly aware that someone notices and sneers at mended marks on my socks…

A Wise Shopper hr570

I’m always impressed by the size of houses that appear in TV shows and movies of U.S. Even when the setting is for a poor family, they live in a mansion by Japanese standards. That’s why the story is often confusing when the house tries to tell how much its inhabitants go through hardship. Japanese people live in tiny space as much, including myself of course. One of my favorite pastimes is bargain-hunting. I like searching for goods that are marked down by 80 percent or more and getting them. When I’m out for a store, I keep my eyes peeled for a cart or shelves of bargain items and pounce on like a hyena. Those items usually have a small sticker of the discounted price over the price tag where the list price had been shown. Some of them have a layer of numerous stickers as they got discounted more and more repeatedly. I peel the sticker off carefully to look at the former list price and to see how much it’s reduced. Sometimes the reduction is huge, which means I hit the jackpot. Imagining there are people who got it at the list price, I feel like I’m a wise shopper and it would be foolish if I didn’t get it. So I buy things dirt cheap, most of which are clothes. Back in my apartment, I squeeze the catch into my closet. The closet is already full with those discounted items and hangers are no longer necessary for my clothes because they are sandwiched each other too tightly to drop. I use many cardboard boxes to store my stuff that make my tiny apartment even smaller. My apartment doesn’t have a walk-in closet, but it seems like my apartment itself has turned into one and I live inside it. I can’t throw them away because it would make a profit of a discount a loss. A number of my cardboard boxes are growing and I don’t catch up. I can’t find one particular item when I really need it. Although I know I have gotten it and stowed somewhere, I rummage around and just can’t find it. And that item shows up from somewhere when I least need it. And it’s gone again somehow when I need it. As I repeat that, I can’t tell why and what for I got it in the first place. The other day, I made a firm resolution to clear some space in my apartment by putting my stuff in order closely. It was a troublesome job but I tried to make my apartment bigger and look better. It worked to some degree and my living environment was improved a little. Only a few days later, I needed a scarf when I was going out. And I couldn’t remember which cardboard box I had stored my scarves in and where I put the box. I again pulled back out numerous boxes and opened them. I couldn’t find it. All my scarves that I had collected through the years by bargain-hunting was sucked into a black hole in the galaxy far, far away and disappeared. I wonder how many years will pass until I see them again…

Reward hr569

My parents didn’t get married for love. Their marriage was part of a deal to inherit the family’s fortune and they took it for money. Another part of the deal was to carry on the family and they had me as a successor. It had gone according to their plan until I decided to do what I wanted for my life and left home. Since then, they attempted every evil way to pull me back in the family. They tried all possible means to make me give up my carrier as a musician. They said I had no talent, I was a failure, and how bad I was as a human being, over and over at every opportunity. They conned me once big time. Out of the blue they offered money to set up my own record label, and after I rented an office and hired the staff, they suddenly withdrew their money, crushed my label and bankrupted me. I defied any kind of attack, threat, temptation and begging from them because I was determined to be a musician. When they realized I wouldn’t succeed the family, they told me not to even visit them because they didn’t want to see me any more. On their repeated requests not to come see them in their house, I understood they didn’t need their child who wasn’t a successor. From that experience, I have a doubt about a concept of unconditional love. I spent about 10 years to complete my last song. The new song I’ve been currently working on hasn’t been completed yet after four years. It was not because I was loitering over my work on purpose. Making music is the only thing I do seriously without compromise. I don’t want to let time interfere with my music. It’s completed when I’m satisfactorily convinced it’s finished. And I dream of my future in which my song will be such a big hit that it will make me a celebrity and take me to Monaco. The other day, I noticed an unfavorable fact. While I dedicate my life for my songs that I spend all my effort, time and passion on, I unconsciously expect reward from them. Although I already have so much fun and feel indescribable happiness during work, I believe that my songs should bring me money and fame someday. That sounds awfully like my parents’ attitude toward me. They raised me while they expected reward when I grew up. Do I also nurture my songs for reward when they are completed? If so, I will end up exploding my anger if my songs don’t reward me with money and fame. Am I the same as my parents after all or can I give unconditional love to my songs? I get enough reward in the process of completing songs. My reward is done when songs are done. From then on, all I should care is to make my songs happy, which means to support them all my life by doing whatever I possibly can to make them be heard by a lot of people. Can I love my songs that way and be satisfied with my life until the day I die? I must try. Because even if I don’t have any money or fame at all, I think I’ve already received reward called life with freedom and happiness…

The Decision hr568

We all face decisions every day, big or small. It may be as trifling as what to eat for lunch, but sometimes it is as important as what decides a course of our life. And the big one often comes abruptly like a surprise attack when we least expect it, unguarded. I faced the first crucial decision unexpectedly on my 20th birthday. In Japan, 20 years of age is regarded as the coming-of-age and there is a custom to celebrate it. When I was 20 years old, I lived in a big house with my family. My parents had a hefty fortune inherited by my ancestors as it was before they failed in their undertaking and lost every thing. For them, my coming-of-age was such a big event that they had bought an expensive sash of kimono for me months in advance for a municipal ceremony held in the first month of the year. Since I defied the custom and didn’t attend the ceremony for which the sash was wasted, my parents determined that my 20th birthday should be memorable at least and planned a party. I wasn’t told about the party because they wanted to surprise me. On my birthday, I was hanging around and having fun with my friend until night, not knowing that my parents and my sister waited for me with 20 red roses and expensive steaks cooked and delivered from a restaurant. As crazy as it sounds, my curfew was 9 p.m. back then. I had too much fun and broke it that particular day. I came home half an hour late bracing for a rebuke from my parents. What awaited me was beyond rebuke actually. I usually came in from the back door that was left unlocked, but it was locked that night. I went around to the front gate that was locked too. I thought my father had locked them by mistake and pushed an intercom button. My mother answered and I asked her to open the door. She said in a tearful voice, “I can’t. It’s no mistake. Your father shut you out of the house.” She started crying and continued, “We were preparing a party and waiting for you from this afternoon. We waited and waited until your father got furious. He said that he didn’t want you to come home because you never appreciated this important day and your family. I can’t open the door. Your father doesn’t want you in this house any more.” I was astounded at the deep trouble I suddenly got into. I could have apologized repeatedly and begged her to let me in. Instead, I was wondering if that was what I really wanted. I didn’t have anything but now it was a chance to leave the house. Totally out of the blue, the moment for a decision for life came up. If I lived in this house forever as a family’s successor like I had been told to, I would inherit family’s fortune. But if I threw it away, I could do whatever I want for my own life. In a matter of seconds, I decided. I chose freedom over money. I said, “That’s fine. I’m leaving.” I felt oddly refreshed and upbeat. My chained life came to an abrupt end through the intercom. My mother panicked and shouted, “What do you mean that’s fine? Wait! Don’t go! I’m coming to open the door! Stay there!” I saw her rushing out of the house and dashing toward the gate. She grabbed me in. On the dining table, there were two empty plates that were my father’s and my sister’s and two untouched steak plates that were my mother’s and mine. In the center was a big vase with 20 roses. I ate steak with my mother who was weeping through on my completely ruined 20th birthday. Shortly afterwards, I eventually left home and became a musician. My mother, my grandmother and my aunts were married unwillingly for money. My father and my grandfather gave up what they wanted to do in order to succeed the family. They all looked unhappy and I didn’t want to live like them. But I also didn’t know freedom didn’t come cheap and my decision would lead to trials and hardships that I had to endure as a consequence…

Formula 1 Team Owner’s Misery hr567

As an avid fan of Formula One racing, I spend every winter longing for a season opener. My long wait was finally coming to an end with ten days to go until the first race. That was when the bad news arrived instead of the race. A Japanese TV network station that had been broadcasting Formula One for decades announced a termination to a free broadcast of the sport. They would no longer broadcast it, starting this season. My dream is to live in Monaco as a team owner of Formula One and I thought I had striven to get closer to the dream little by little. On the contrary, I was left far from it now that even watching Formula One on TV got taken away from me. I scoured on the Internet but didn’t find any website for free streaming of the race. The only way to watch it in Japan was through cable TV that cost about $25 a month. Paying money for a broadcast that I was accustomed to watching free all the time is quite undesirable. But when I looked into the cable station further, I found out that would broadcast live all three free practices, adding to the qualifying and the race. While I had been resigned to watching taped, delayed, edited and cut versions of only the qualifying and the race through free broadcasting for years, the cable station would let me watch all sessions of every venue live. It meant a significant upgrade for my Formula One life, and I decided to subscribe it. Watching live broadcasting for all sessions of all Formula One races around the world would be absolutely fascinating. On TV, I sometimes see VIPs watching the race on a TV screen in an elegant paddock lounge while having champagne and appetizers although they were at the circuit and could get a direct viewing of the real cars. If VIPs at the race venue watch it on a TV screen, it would be similar when I watch it live on my TV screen, except for my small apartment, cheap wine and junk food. It would be gorgeous enough for me to feel like I had become a team owner who attends all the venues. I thought $25 was inexpensive for an imaginary taste of dream-come-true. But once I got down to sign up for a subscription, I encountered an annoying process. Despite this high-tech age, I needed to ask for contract papers, fill them out, send them back, receive a tuner and set it up to my TV set. The season opener that is regarded as a celebration among the people concerned was ten days away and it was impossible to be all set by then. What a misery it is that a fake team owner would miss the festive first race of the season. I learned what $25-a-month could do at best…

The First Cold in 10 Years hr566

I started coughing the next day when I got back from a four-day trip of my winter getaway. The day after that, I had a high fever. Now it was official that I had a cold. I had been very careful not to catch a cold for years by wiping my hands with wet tissue every time I touch public materials, gurgling right after I come home and drinking vegetable juice every morning. As I had boasted about building up my immune system, I believed I had strong resistance to a cold. That confidence was shattered. My diligent anti-bacteria daily life was to no avail and I caught a cold for the first time in more than ten years. Because my fever was as high as 101 degrees, I suspected it was influenza. I also feared that I might have contracted MARS or something since I was strolling around the airport during the trip. I usually consult the Internet instead of a doctor, and websites said that I should see how my fever would go over a week. If it got higher and lasted more than a week, it would be influenza. If less than that, it would be a simple cold. Until the verdict, I just took cold medicine and stayed in bed. To make things worse, my partner caught a cold at the same time and had the exactly the same symptoms as mine. Two of us under the same roof had a cold simultaneously meant there was no one who took care of us. With nobody to cook or clean, we ate instant foods in our gradually dirtying apartment, which surely didn’t seem to work for recovery. I lost appetite and every simple movement lead to exhaustion easily. Because I hadn’t had a cold for such a long time, I forgot about how painful it could be. I lay in bed all day long coughing and wheezing, with my head dim by a fever and medicine, thinking about how much I wanted to be in good health. I realized that health was the most important thing to have and I could do anything if only I got rid of a cold. Then I began to feel helpless and all sorts of negative thoughts invaded me. I was afraid of being in this excruciating condition over a week. What if I didn’t get better after several weeks? Could it be much more serious disease beyond my deductions? Would I eventually be brought into an emergency room and hospitalized for a long time? When I get very old, would I be feeble like this every day? If so, I strongly defy aging. I slept on and off with those cloudy thoughts. One morning, I woke up after I slept for twelve hours straight probably because of medicine. I found no sign of my partner who sleeps in a different room and usually gets up earlier than I do. There was no sound of him walking down the hallway or fixing breakfast as I hear in my room every morning. I wondered if he had died as his condition got worse during the night. Should I call an ambulance? Can I live all alone from now on? Do I have enough money for his funeral? I felt terrified at the thought of what I should do, and then, I heard him getting out of his room. He was alive, thankfully. After three days in physical and mental agony, my fever began to drop. It returned to normal temperature within a week. It was a cold, not anything serious after all. I got back to work ten days later. To sum up, I wasted two weeks in total on the trip and the cold. Only one good thing was that I lost six pounds in a week although I hadn’t been able to lose an ounce whatever I tried. Now I must keep my weight this way. Otherwise, I suffered for nothing and just threw two weeks down the drain…

Escape from the Snow World hr565

The mountain region in Japan where I live is covered with seven to ten feet of snow every winter. My town is in a close area with mountains in all directions. Those mountains turn into tall white walls in winter. Deep snow lies beneath, white walls stand around, and snowflakes constantly cover the sky above. It gives me a sense of being contained in a white box. As winter deepens, I begin to feel claustrophobia and suffocating. For that reason, I take a trip to the snow-free region and stay there for a few days every winter. I stayed at a hotel near Narita Airport and one near Tokyo Disneyland this winter because they became bargain prices by using my accumulated points of the hotel chain’s loyalty program that I had gained with a trip to Montreal. Since I was entitled to use a pool and a sauna for free at the hotel near the airport, I brought my new swimsuit that had been sleeping in the back of my drawer for more than ten years and looked out-dated even though it hadn’t been worn. Right after I checked in, I rushed into the pool. As I was swimming watching a plane flying over me through the round glass ceiling, I remembered how pleasant swimming was. I used to swim in the pool at the gym a couple of days a week until about ten years ago. I would care about my health and stamina so much, but I have gradually become a night owl and put on weight. I decided to take this opportunity to restart my health-conscious life. Next morning, while almost every part of my body was aching, I had breakfast at the buffet restaurant in the hotel. Most guests were from foreign countries because the hotel was close to the airport. I felt as if I was eating abroad and it cost a minimum to take an imaginary overseas trip. After I stuffed a whole day’s amount of food into my stomach by eating for two hours there, I left for an outlet mall near the hotel. I usually enjoy strolling around a mall and looking for a bargain price, but I returned to the hotel quite early this time in order to swim in the evening. Before I checked out next morning, I went back to the pool again. Then I moved to the hotel near Tokyo Disneyland and found that the pool there was free too. I ended up swimming four times during this four-day trip. Although I was supposed to be healthier when I came home, I started coughing next day and it didn’t stop. Whether this trip was effective or not was now questionable. Did I catch a cold at a warmer place where I bothered to travel to get away from my cold town? Besides, my region has had unusually little snow this winter and neither the ground nor the mountains are all white. I can’t tell what I took that trip for after all…

Vertigo hr564

When I woke up in the morning and sit up on the bed, my room whirled before my eyes. Anxiety was what I felt first thing in the morning. I wondered if I had a serious illness, if I was developing a brain tumor, if my autonomic nerve was damaged and if I couldn’t live a healthy life any longer. I was swallowed up by the waves of all kinds of negative thoughts. It was how I started a brand-new day and I had been in this mess for over a week. I sometimes feel dizzy but vertigo rarely happens to me. It occurred only three times to the best of my memory. The first time was when I was fourteen and dieting solely on watermelon. I had eaten nothing but watermelon for three days and had vertigo in the morning of the fourth day. The diet ended there and my weight rebounded, as is the way with dieting. The second time was about two years ago when I continued lack of sleep for years to keep religiously my daily routine of taking an early morning spa. I had a massive attack of vertigo in the middle of the night and scribbled an instant will because I believed I was dying. And this recent week-long dizziness was the third time. Since it has become my mantra that “there’s always an answer on the Internet,” I looked it up online. Most websites gave lengthy negative possibilities of serious illnesses that threw readers down into the depths of anxiety. They concluded that dizzy spells could lead to complete deafness or death. Those pieces of information weren’t what I was looking for. I wanted to know how to cure. I kept searching for remedy, but all ‘How to Cure’ sections were the same; Go see a doctor. Do they think we don’t come up with that idea until we look up on the Internet? I wouldn’t have been online if I had decided to see a doctor in the first place. The point was, I was on the net not to see a doctor. I learned from my experience that going to the doctor would do more harm than good in most cases. When I see a doctor, I need to get up early in the morning, wait for a long time at the hospital for my turn while being exposed to various viruses of other patients, go through all kinds of medical examination, get sucked my blood, take numerous kinds of medicine, get more ill by the medicine’s side effects and feel more stress and anxiety. I don’t trust especially clinics and hospitals in Japan. I once went to the dentist for a root canal. Although the treatment was supposed to be done in one visit, the doctor divided it into four extremely short visits. On the last visit when the treatment was all done, the doctor told me to make another appointment because he found a cavity in my back tooth. As I didn’t notice it and it didn’t hurt at all, I said that I didn’t want the treatment and wouldn’t come. Then he told me, rather threatened me, that even if it didn’t hurt, leaving a cavity would be catastrophic. He added, “A cavity is cancer.” I was deeply intimidated by the sound of ‘cancer’, but still kept cool enough to judge that a cavity was quite different from cancer. I never went there again. Since I had no intention to go to the doctor this time as well, I looked up my dizziness further on the Internet. I came across one US website that finally said about the cure for my symptoms. It illustrated how to move my head to stop vertigo and it cured my week-long dizzy spells instantly with one simple try. I had a pleasant morning without vertigo at last. Internet solved my problem yet again, big time. I read on about what caused it after all and the site said stress. I don’t know any illness which causes don’t include stress. I don’t know how to live without stress either…

A New Life hr563

I usually watch US TV dramas and movies by recording them on a digital video recorder. As the selection is unbearably limited in Japan, I make up other US programs by getting DVDs. Recently, my DVR hasn’t been in good shape and I needed to come up with a new way to watch US shows. I use a fiber-optic Internet connection at home and it earns points every month. Those points are redeemable for a Hulu subscription and I noticed my accumulated points were worth about six-month free Hulu. I decided to get a Fire Stick TV to watch Hulu on the TV screen and stepped into the Hulu world for the first time. An almost countless, vast numbers of US shows and movies have become available twenty-four seven. It flipped a switch in my brain to an English mode and let me feel as if I lived in US. Rather, I felt as if I lived inside the drama, to be exact. I finally got to watch ‘The Walking Dead’ that wasn’t aired in Japan and I’d been dying for. As I watched two or three episodes per day every day, I thought about the story even while I wasn’t watching it. I’m all jumpy when I walk along the dim hallway of my apartment building every night. Since I live in a remote, rural town, a view from my apartment simply consists of mountains, woods and the sky. Thanks to that and Hulu, I now can forget about being in Japan except for the time I go to the city once a week. I even get the illusion that I successfully escaped from life in Japan without living abroad. It may be possible that I have acquired my desired life by this way in which I plug away at my music here and take a trip to US or Canada once a year or two. And that makes me wonder. Is my desired life writing and recording songs in my small apartment that nobody would listen to until I die? On the other hand though, it’s a waste of life to get money and fame by writing a catchy empty hit song with casual effort. Does that mean life goes to waste either way? It’s ideal that my strenuous song makes a smash hit by chance and I get successful without losing anything. Does that mean we have to live depending on luck? Is the only way we attain happiness by giving up greed for money and fame, or does that mean a loser? Too many US TV shows have led me into too much thinking. They are interesting and amusing enough to cause lack of sleep every night and I’m in slightly poor condition. As I’ve been concerned about dizzy spells that occurs once or twice a day lately, I had a dream in which I had massive vertigo and the world was whirling…

The Flight to Japan hr562

After I checked out the hotel in Laval, I was waiting for the Uber in front of it. Snow of the day before brought a bitter chill that made me shiver while I enjoyed a breathtaking view of a clear sky in the early morning. I was going to the airport where I would take a flight to Japan via Toronto. No matter how often I travel overseas, I feel extremely nervous on the morning of a flight every time, fearing that I might miss the flight. I was lucky, as it happened to be Sunday this time. If it had been a weekday, I would be crushed by an additional worry of a traffic jam. While I usually plan anything carefully, luck is an invincible helper in the end. The Uber driver was a man from the Middle East, who knew a few Japanese words since his son learned judo. It was his third day to work as an Uber driver. Because both my partner and I had wished for something like Uber for a long time and we have been impressed with its convenient service since we began to use it, my partner said to the driver that he had a bright future in his new job. He thanked my partner with deep gratitude and pure joy in his words. At the airport in Montreal, my partner suddenly claimed that he was very hungry. I told him to wait until we got to Toronto as we had gotten the ticket to use the lounge there. He wouldn’t listen and we ended up paying $25 for the overcharged airport sandwiches. And the airline company I frequently use, and have troubles with, did it again. Although I made a reservation and chose the seats well over four months ago, they had handed the seats to other passengers. If they boast about the advance seat selection, they need to learn how to hold it. During the seventy-five-minutes’ crammed flight to Toronto, my partner and I had to sit separately, and I got water when I asked for apple juice for some reason. Other than those small incidents, the flight to Japan took off without any troubles, fortunately. Thirteen hours later the plane would land and my trip to Canada would come to an end. I was surprised that there was no Japanese family with noisy children this time that I usually encounter on the plane. Instead, quite a few Canadian tourists were on board. Their trip to Japan had just begun and they looked so happy and excited. I couldn’t understand why they had chosen Japan for the destination of their trip and how they could be happy about it like that. I was sitting behind them feeling so depressed to go back to Japan which houses and buildings are tasteless, which historical spots are gloomy and dark, which cities are jammed with too many people, and which families with kids behave obnoxious. I wanted them to tell me even one charm they found about Japan where I would be stuck again from now. I suppose every one wants to get out of their daily lives, but of all the beautiful places in the world, why Japan? In there, I will spend every day waiting for the day to get out and escape to Montreal and Laval again, figuring out how to do it…

A Shopping Mall in Laval hr561

Near the hotel I stayed in, there was an indoor shopping mall called Carrefour. I walked on the bridge that crossed a 10-lane highway and caught a glimpse of the glass ceiling of the mall up ahead. As I came closer, the mall got bigger and more splendid. It was my first visit to this mall which beauty made my jaw dropped. Although it was a one-story complex, its ceiling was about three-story high. The passageways are wide, and in the middle of them, there were cafes, kiosks, shop wagons, trees, and life-sized decorations that looked like a park. A classic car-shaped cart was running around to help shoppers who had difficulty in walking. I felt as if I was strolling around an elegant European town rather than a mall. It was undoubtedly the most gorgeous, fashionable mall I’d ever seen. I passed high-class brand shops and bought accessories on sale at Old Navy. To have lunch, I was headed for the food court that was the fanciest one I’d ever been. Sunlight came in through the glass ceiling high above. Glittering chandeliers were everywhere. The restaurants weren’t just for fast food but for steaks and seafood as well. I had a Chinese dish at a cozy, clean table with a gleeful grin all over my face. After lunch, I strolled about the department store Simons that was on one of the wings of the mall. I couldn’t tell whether it had to do with a French-spoken region or not, shoppers there were all fashionable and somehow good-looking. I was embarrassed that I wasn’t pretty enough for the place and felt the need of more serious dieting. The merchandise the store carried was colorful and stylish, which was the kind I rarely found in Japan. By the reason that I couldn’t get any of those in Japan, I talked myself into impulse buying of a bag, scarves and gloves. And I took a rest on a bench in the mall having ice cream. I had never been in such a pleasant mall like this. Of course Japan has big modern malls in suburbs too, but those are crammed with idle housewives and noisy kids. Restaurants are chronically too full with them to get in. Remembering how uncomfortable life in Japan was, I was impressed by this town Laval afresh. People were nice and kind. The town was safe and relaxing. And it had this beautiful and gorgeous mall. I couldn’t believe a place like this existed on earth. I craved to live here and wished I had money to do so. I had liked to live in my apartment back in Japan since I moved in five years ago, but that life seemed miserable now that I knew Laval. Time is limited. With each passing day, the remaining days of my life decrease. That thought pressured and threatened me. I was assailed by a strong urge to move to Laval as soon as possible…

It Is Laval hr560

On the sixth day of my trip to Montreal, I moved to a different hotel in a Montreal suburb Laval from downtown. The hotel rates there were a little cheaper, and I also wanted to visit Laval that I had never been to even when I lived in Montreal a long time ago. I looked out the window at the lounge in the hotel. A vast 10-lane highway ran straight through a wide stretch of plane land covered with greenery as far as the eye can see, which reminded me of Orlando, Florida. Across the highway from the hotel was a new building of the space camp attraction beside which a tall replica of a rocket stood. Right next to them, there was a movie complex which building had a futuristic, UFO-like shape. Looking at all of them against the background of twilight, I felt as if I had traveled through time to the future or I had actually arrived at Tomorrowland. I thought I should have known and come to Laval sooner. It was kind of an exquisite mix of openness in Anaheim, California and chic in Montreal, which added up to an ideal place for me. I wished I could live here someday. Just before leaving Japan for this trip, I saw the biggest, clearest rainbow I’d ever seen from my apartment window. Since I watched a movie ‘The Muppets’, I’ve always felt like there is a dreamer’s place on the other side of a rainbow as the song in the film says whenever I come across one. And one morning in Laval, a rainbow appeared. I was in the bathroom when my partner shouted, “Here’s a huge, beautiful rainbow!” Although I quickly came out, it had vanished already, and only my partner’s ecstatic face was there. He had taken a photo of it and proudly showed it to me, as if he was the chosen one to have seen it. For some reason, I extremely resented and kept wondering why I was in the bathroom at that moment. I was grumpy all day long, thinking that meant I wasn’t good enough to live in Laval, Laval rejected me, I was disqualified, all of which was merely because of one missed rainbow. I returned to the hotel room exhausted and still sullen early in that evening. I casually stood by the window, and saw what was in front of me. It was a gigantic perfect arch of a rainbow against an orange sky. I felt awed and relieved at the same time. As the way and the look of the rainbow that appeared for the second time in one day were quite mystical, I even thought the rainbow was trying to tell me something. I may have passed through the big rainbow that I had seen in Japan and have reached to the opposite side of it. This place could be that one on the other side of the rainbow. Or, more possibly, three biggest rainbows ever in a few days simply occurred by sheer chance…

Casino de Montreal hr559

I visited the casino in Montreal for the first time in seven years. It had been remodeled into an even more gorgeous, glorious place than before. I arrived there before noon and had an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch at a fancy restaurant. I enjoyed the splendid buffet at an incredibly low price. Compare to the amount of money I was about to spend for gambling, everything seemed cheap. Every time I lose, I always try to calm my anger by thinking the money I spend here somehow serves to make the city better since it’s a public-managed casino. The city is so beautiful that I regard what I lose in the casino as an entrance fee to a theme park called Montreal. I used to live in Montreal but had to leave as I became short of money for life abroad. When the time to go back to Japan drew near, I seriously thought of gaining money to stay in Montreal, by gambling. I determinedly sat at the slot machine of a high progressive prize for a couple of days. On the last day, it happened. As the slot I had played kept gobbling up my money, I moved over to another slot machine and a middle-aged woman came to the one I just left. She turned it for only five or six times and hit the jackpot unbelievably quickly and easily. If I had continued for five more quarters on that slot, I would have won. She snatched $100,000 away from me right before my eyes. While she screamed for joy, the lights flashed, the sound blared and the casino workers scurried toward her with papers, I was running into the bathroom. I couldn’t help crying in there. I was trembling with chagrin. I cursed my bad luck and my coming life in Japan. A long time ago, my mother asked a fortuneteller about my future. She told me that according to the fortuneteller, I would often come close to big money, but it would slip away each time. “So, you will never be rich,” my mother said to me. I remembered that and I thought I saw proof that she was right. After I returned to my apartment, I wailed out loud like a baby. My former self was that stupid. Now, I play the slot machine just for fun. I sat at the minimum bet slot with a low prize. If I was lucky and won a little, it meant that I could play longer with that money. The band started playing at the stage on the casino floor and I enjoyed soft drinks that I took from the free drink bar listening to it. I won a little, which let me stay and play there longer than I had planned. As fatigue from the long flight began to kick in earnestly, I got back to my hotel room and fell into bed. It was an excitingly fun day at the casino that cleaned me out yet again, as usual…