Saturday, December 10, 2016
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…
Saturday, November 26, 2016
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…
Labels:
Alfa Romeo,
Aston Martin,
Bugatti,
car,
celebrity,
classic car,
F1,
Fiat,
grocery store,
information,
Japan,
La Festa Mille Miglia,
race,
restaurant,
road race,
small town,
Tokyo
Saturday, November 12, 2016
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…
Saturday, October 29, 2016
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…
Labels:
audition,
debut,
friend,
friendship,
idol,
Japan,
Korean-Japanese,
Kyoto,
low-income,
name,
neighborhood,
parents,
school,
show,
singer,
teacher,
train,
trip,
TV
Sunday, October 16, 2016
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…
Labels:
answering machine,
call,
cellphone,
class clown,
credit card,
Family,
grandfather,
hell,
message,
mother,
nerd,
parents,
payment,
phobia,
phone,
prank call,
smartphone,
teenager,
telephone,
Tokyo
Friday, September 30, 2016
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…
Saturday, September 17, 2016
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…
Saturday, September 3, 2016
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…
Labels:
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cold bath,
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fever,
global warming,
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heat,
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mountain,
ski slope,
sore throat,
spa,
summer,
water
Saturday, August 20, 2016
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…
Saturday, August 6, 2016
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…
Saturday, July 23, 2016
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…
Thursday, July 7, 2016
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…
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Thursday, June 23, 2016
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…
Saturday, June 4, 2016
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…
Friday, May 20, 2016
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…
Saturday, May 7, 2016
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…
Saturday, April 23, 2016
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…
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Saturday, April 9, 2016
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…
Saturday, March 26, 2016
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…
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Saturday, March 12, 2016
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…
Labels:
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watermelon
Saturday, February 27, 2016
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…
Saturday, February 13, 2016
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…
Labels:
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Saturday, January 30, 2016
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…
Saturday, January 16, 2016
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…
Labels:
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Monday, January 4, 2016
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…
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