Friday, January 24, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.503
The drama club to which I belonged when I was a junior high school
student had two school plays a year, for the homecoming entertainment
and for the welcoming new students party. The casting would be done by a
seniority system. A handful of senior members appeared on the stage and
other members worked backstage. New members usually started from the
stage props staff, then were promoted to the scene shifter, the
spotlighting, the curtain drawer/prompter, the stage lighting, and
finally, the cast member. My fellow five new comers had quit within a
year because they couldn’t take this slow promotion toward cast members,
and I was the only one left among those who joined that year. Since
there were so many members who were one year my senior, it seemed the
day I would be cast in a play would never come in this seniority system.
But once I begin something, I don’t quit easily. When the twice-a-year
school play came near, I would work eagerly backstage while seeing some
senior cast members whose acting was much worse than mine rehearse on
the stage. I started as the stage props staff. The first play I took
part in was a Japanese drama. Some cast members had trouble putting
Japanese sandals very quickly when they stormed out of the room in one
scene and complained to us. From then on I had stretched their sandals
carefully before the scene for the cast members to put them on quickly.
As the spotlighting, I learned to move a spotlight just as the cast
member moved on stage and to keep the light above her chest all the
time. Every once in a while in rehearsal, I made a mistake to follow the
cast’s quick movement and my light missed the position slightly. In
that case, the play would come to an instant halt and everyone turned to
me. I would stand straight beside the spotlight and yell “I’m so
sorry!” to the whole production. Dreaming of standing on stage someday, I
resigned myself to working for drearily trivial things so hard in the
total shadow of the glittering stage glamor…
Friday, January 17, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.502
I was a member of the drama club at junior high school. There were
almost 100 new comers when I first joined it in the seventh grade, but
only six remained including me after a month because of sober training
that was far from the stage glamor. We did voice and physical exercises
every day to develop our abdominal muscles. In the end of the exercises,
the members would stand side by side and utter a loud and long tone one
by one in front of the club captain. While we were squeezing ‘Ahhhh’, a
senior member would put a hand on our shoulder to see if it rose. If we
were doing abdominal breathing, our shoulders didn’t rise. The club
captain would time the length of the tone and check whether it wavered
or not. A loud, long, steady voice was good and I was the one who always
uttered the loudest, longest, steadiest ‘Ahhhh’ without raising my
shoulders. While the club captain corrected each member, in my turn she
would say “Nothing to be corrected” to me. That made me so happy and I
practiced diligently back at home too, to hear her say that every time.
Gradually, I had tougher training at the club such as tongue twisters,
short dialogues and pantomime. For some reason, I was good at those and
had a good word from the captain each time. I began to think I might
have a talent for acting. Secretly I took pleasure in picturing myself
on the stage of a school play. A sad fact was, I was a fat and short
girl. Even with the ability to act well, things wouldn’t go so smoothly
for an ugly girl like me in the theater. But back then, I was too young
and innocent to realize that. I just kept on striving and improving only
my acting without caring about my bad looks…
Friday, January 10, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.501
Last year, I spent fairly much time pondering whether I live in Japan
for the rest of my life or settle in US for my music career. I used to
live in the States for music and returned to Japan temporarily. This
temporary homecoming turned out to become much longer than I had
expected and have lasted to this day because of rapid advances in
computer technology and the Internet. It’s now possible to work for the
US music market while living in Japan through the Internet. Songs and
books are easily released and promoted. More new tools and gadgets could
be introduced, so that physically staying in US could be unnecessary.
Above all, life in this small town of Japan, which is secluded from the
city by the mountains, is suitable for creative work. It’s so
hustle-free that I deeply concentrate on my work. Since I moved in here,
my working pace has been good and steady. I feel I have finally found a
perfect environment to work on music. On the other hand, I’m always
afraid of settling down. Anyone who stops would die. I would lose
motivation for writing a song unless I move forward even by a small
step. For this year, I decided to visit the States for the first time in
years. I know its cost is a prodigious sum of money for me and it
requires mountainous troublesome arrangements. I also know too well that
after those efforts, what awaits me are an excruciatingly long flight,
murderous jet lag, and countless unpleasant incidents. Still, I need to
breathe in California air. My anxieties for money, health and the future
never go away but I think I can manage as long as I stay positive and
look ahead. My mind was made up…
Filed under Life | Tags: Childhood, Famil
Filed under Life | Tags: Childhood, Famil
Friday, December 27, 2013
Hidemi’s Rambling No.500
MusicMarketplace.com
This incident happened one New Year’s at the end of the card game called ‘kabu’, in which my uncle acted as dealer for the yearly family casino at my grandparents’ house. He had lost quite a lot to my cousin, who was his son, as usual that night and my cousin had left the table as the morning dawned. My uncle, my mother and I were left at the table and the game was about to close. My mother asked for a few more deals because she had also lost a large sum and wanted to get it back. To recover her loss quickly, she bet by the $100. The game was played for high stakes every year, but I had never seen the stakes this high. She lost in succession and her loss swelled to $500 in a flash. “This is the last bet,” she claimed in desperation and put $500 on the table. She tried to offset her total loss on the last deal of the game. All at once the tension skyrocketed and strange silence filled the room. I held my breath and withdrew my usual small bet. The cards were dealt tensely and my mother and my uncle showed their hands of fate. Both hands were ridiculously bad but my mother’s was even worse. She lost $1000. Burying her head in her hands, she repeatedly uttered, “It can’t be! Can’t be true!” I saw tears in her widely opened bloodshot eyes. Then she repeated “Oh, my… Oh, my…” in a faint voice for ten times and staggered away. I clearly remember her state of stupor. A couple of days later back in our home, I enticed her into playing ‘kabu’ with me since I learned how poorly she played it and I knew I would win. I used to receive cash as a New Year’s gift from my relatives during New Year’s and it would amount to $1000. I dangled it in front of her and said that it would be her chance to get back her loss. She took it and we played for $1000. As I had thought, she lost another $1000 to me. She said she couldn’t pay, and I offered her the installment plan. I got $100 more to my monthly allowance of $30 for the next ten months. That was the richest year in my early teens. Many years later, she failed in real estate investment and lost most of our family fortune that had been inherited for generations. The amount she lost that time was well over $1 million. And that was the money I was supposed to inherit…
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Friday, December 20, 2013
Hidemi’s Rambling No.499
MusicMarketplace.com
The living room in my grandparents’ home was used for a card game when the house turned into a family casino during New Year’s. The game was a blackjack-like one called ‘kabu’ and organized by my uncle. It used to be the best treat of New Year’s for me in my childhood and early in my teens. Unlike ‘mortar roller’ I had introduced before, this game was played seriously and intensely because it was for high stakes. The players usually bet a dollar or more, sometimes as high as a hundred dollars. The farther into the night it got, the higher the bet went. The family members would leave the table one by one, as the higher bet would make them tense and deprive them of pleasure. As for me, I liked to see the game get heated so much and would play throughout the night until the game came to an end in the next morning. The usual players who stayed at the table near dawn would be my uncle who was a dealer, my eldest cousin, my mother and I. My uncle was a successor of the family by marriage and so my grandparents were his in-laws. He was on terrible terms with my grandmother who raised my eldest cousin in place of him and his wife because they were too busy working at the family farm. Consequently, he didn’t get along well with his own son either. New Year’s ‘kabu’ would become an intense battle between my uncle and my cousin by dawn. My uncle couldn’t lose especially to his son and that made the game extraordinarily thrilling. My cousin would bet more than $10 on each deal and my heart would be pounding by seeing bills on the table. My uncle would concentrate on the cards dealt to him and his son too deeply to care about my small bets. Because he would forget to count me in and settle my deal thoughtlessly each time, I would end up winning quite a big amount of money in total every year. He would summon all his strength when he saw the last card dealt to him. In spite of his prayer-like chants “Come on! Come on!”, most of the time the card would be the least one he had wanted. Hand after hand, he drew the worst card possible while my cousin was rolling on the tatami floor to stifle his giggling. As far as I remember, he had never won against my cousin. He was manly and frank, but I can still picture him going back to his room after the game in the morning light with unsteady steps, worn out, drooping, and on the verge of tears. Three months after the house was burned down, he died of cancer without becoming the head of the family…
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Friday, December 13, 2013
Hidemi’s Rambling No.498
MusicMarketplace.com
I ask you to keep what you are about to read in here to yourself since it’s regarding an illegal activity I was once engaged in. Until I was about sixteen years old, my parents, my younger sister and I had visited my grandparents’ home every year during the New Year’s. Limited for that time of the year, a quiet countryside house of my grandparents’ would turn into a family casino. It consisted of three different areas. In the card game area, which was the living room, a card game called ‘kabu’ that is similar to blackjack would be played. In the coin game area, which was my grandparents’ room, would be for a game called ‘mortar roller’. And the break area, which was the dining room, would be for those who didn’t like gambling or who needed food and drink. It would be open for 24 hours but only the family members could play. The coin game was organized by my grandmother. She set up a huge china mortar for sesame on the tatami floor and the players would sit around it on the floor. They would take turns and roll a 10-yen coin, which is worth about ten cents, inside the mortar. The coin rolled along the side of the round mortar, descending gradually toward the bottom. If it landed on other coins at the bottom, the player could get them. Although the game was simple, we would be absorbed in playing and our heads and eyes were rolling with a coin above the mortar. My cousin was good at it with her own devised technique to throw in a coin. I would also win snugly with my fixation on money. Beside the excited circle, my grandfather and my father, who were not interested in gambling, would talk over Japanese tea that my grandfather would make. My grandmother would start fretting after midnight and tell us to be quiet because she had believed that the military policemen could bust in with bayonets. We laughed at her anachronism while seeing her try to mute the mortar and still live the WWII era. She upgraded the mortar one year by putting a round piece of cardboard near the bottom. The mortar’s floor was raised and became wider and flatter so that it was harder to make the coin lie on top of the other. More coins to take would be left at the bottom and the game got more exciting. Those were such fond memories and I can still hear the sound of a rolling coin inside a mortar during New Year’s. Later on, the joyful grandparents’ house was burned down by my grandmother’s carelessness with a candle. It’s gone forever…
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Saturday, December 7, 2013
Hidemi’s Rambling No.497
MusicMarketplace.com
My eyesight has grown considerably worse. The glasses I’ve used for a long time no longer fit to my deteriorated eyesight. I went to get new glasses the other day for the first time in years. During the course of years when I had paid no attention to the glasses market, the stores have become modern and sophisticated, looking like boutiques. Several different chains have their stores inside the shopping mall. They carry cool frames at the low price that people could never dream of years ago. An eyesight test was done inside the store and didn’t use an eye chart but some sort of a high-tech machine. The glasses were prepared only in twenty minutes. I had dreaded how much the new pair would cost, but they charged me far less than I had braced for. I had never imagined getting glasses would be this easy. My new pair is nifty and incredibly light. My face looks so different. With my new sharp vision, I feel like I have transformed myself into a new me. I had my first close encounter with glasses when I was in the second grade. I failed an annual eyesight test at school and the school required a further examination at the doctor’s office. That sent my mother into a near panic. Back in those days, one of the unbelievably stupid things people said in a rural area was that a girl with glasses couldn’t marry and so had no life in the future. My mother said to me, “If you need glasses, it’ll be the end of your life!” I was headed for the doctor’s office trembling with fear with my friend who had also failed the test. After the examination, the receptionist simply let my friend go, and then said to me, “Your glasses will be ready soon. Come get them at the store next to this office.” As casually as that, she handed me a death sentence. I couldn’t face the fact and told a lie to my mother that my eyes were fine. Since then, I hadn’t been able to sleep thinking that the doctor’s office would call for my glasses. Every single phone ring made me jump. My coward lie served me a couple of uneasy months but the call didn’t come after all. My glasses were smothered up. When I was eighteen, I needed glasses to get a driver’s license. I came back to the store next to the doctor’s office and, finally a decade later, got my first pair there. While I took a load off my mind at last, I failed a driving test this time. Only the glasses were left and I had cherished them up until my new pair…
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