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:
airline,
airport,
Canada,
daily life,
flight,
hotel,
Japan,
Japanese,
Laval,
luck,
Montreal,
reservation,
seat selection,
Toronto,
tourist,
traffic jam,
travel,
trip,
Uber
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