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…
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