Closed Down

There is a mysterious pattern that my favorite place is destined to be unpopular and eventually closed down. Shops, restaurants, theme parks and even attractions in popular theme parks have closed down once they became my favorite.

My favorite restaurant in this area used to be Red Lobster because of its chic interior and westernized menu, but as I feared, it fell into the cursed pattern and closed. The TV said Pizza Hut opened where Red Lobster had been, and people have flooded for all-you-can-eat pizzas baked with a stone oven.

Months later, I happened to have an errand near the restaurant and tried in. While the building remained the same as Red Lobster’s, the interior was remodeled into a casual style. The place was empty, except for a few servers having time on their hands. I had a wonderful time with delicious pizza and pasta, the reasonable price, and the quiet atmosphere above all. Soon, I started to be worried about the place. The fact that it was about to become my favorite and that my partner and I were the only customers in this large restaurant might mean the place wouldn’t last long. I was thinking about the fate of this restaurant when families with small children came in one after another. The place was quickly filled with clamor and we had to flee. A restaurant with families is all but closed down to me…

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My Fear and Hope by Hidemi Woods

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hobo mark

I started watching ‘Mad Men’ that had been recorded and stored in my HDD for some time. In an episode I watched last night, young Don found a mark by a hobo on an entrance jamb of his house, which stood for a dishonest man in the house.

A few years ago, when I still lived in my old apartment in the Tokyo metropolitan area, a man banged on the door in the evening. He said he was sent by a management company of the apartment and it was urgent. My partner opened the door and the man told him that a water filtration system had to be installed in my kitchen now. My partner found out right away that the man was just soliciting and had nothing to do with the management company. He was pushy and persistent while my partner was driving him off. In the end, my partner shoved him away.

Afterward, we noticed a small strange mark beside the door. Then a couple of months later, there was a Japanese news story on TV, which reported on a vicious soliciting scheme. Sales persons mark each house with a small sign to categorize by easiness of soliciting. That explained a mysterious mark at the entrance of my apartment. Based on the fact that I had never had any kind of soliciting again since the night my partner shoved a sales person, the mark on my apartment could have stood for something quite tough…

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My Fear and Hope by Hidemi Woods

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Vertigo

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…

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My Fear and Hope by Hidemi Woods

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A New Life

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…

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My Fear and Hope by Hidemi Woods

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My Super Power

The first apartment I rented on my own a long time ago was located on the edge of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The neighborhood was full of vacant lots and there were few shops near the subway station. In front of the apartment was a vast, newly built street, on which cars seldom passed by. It was a lonesome, bleak-looking place.

But only in a couple of years, high-rise condominium buildings had been built one after another around my apartment and many commercial buildings had appeared near the subway station. Cars were running constantly on the street in front of my apartment and shook my room. In no time, the neighborhood was filled with young families and I was besieged by kids and babies. I used to work for my music at home during the night and go to sleep early in the morning. My sleep had deteriorated by the disturbing shrieks of neighbor kids who played at the parking lots. It drove me out of the metropolitan area and sent me to the suburbs.

My next apartment was far from the train station and surrounded by fields. There were hardly any shops around and it was a quiet, country-looking place. Then, in a couple of years again, numerous houses and condominiums had been built around my apartment and a gigantic shopping mall had appeared. Young families with kids and babies had rushed into the area and soon my sleep was deprived by their annoying shrieks since they let their children play on the streets. Many restaurants newly opened, but I couldn’t make use of it, as they were packed with noisy kids day and night. I was again kicked out of the suburbs by kids and now settled in the mountains.

The apartment I currently live in is located in a sparsely populated town that is famous for the heavy snowfall. I was certain I could finally have a kids-free life here when I moved in. Almost all the neighbors were old people and I rarely saw small kids. I thought that if the number of children ever increased in the town like this especially in the time of national demographic problem of a decreased child population, it would be no coincidence anymore but I would be cursed.

And it turned out that I am cursed. After a couple of months I moved in, several families with kids and babies had begun to moved into this apartment from the massive earthquake-hit area as a place of refuge from radioactive contamination. In three years, more and more families with kids moved in from else where, and existing female residents have become pregnant one after another. I don’t figure out what’s happening in such a quiet, remote town like this. It’s almost a horror.

The communal spa of this apartment is now packed with noisy kids and screaming babies and has become a place for stress instead of relaxation. It’s proved that I have the super power to magnetize children. I might move deeper in the mountains as a last resort. The only way for me to get a quiet life might be living in a complete desolate place by building a log cabin by myself. But I know families with kids would come after me sooner or later and build their log cabins around mine because of my super power, that is, the super curse anyway…

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Loneliness Is My Norm

The nearest grocery store from my home is a 25-minute walk away. That small local store carried a sale on eggs at one dollar for ten. I walked there with my partner to get them. Since my town is so small and rural, there are usually almost no pedestrians on the streets. Except that cars are passing by sparsely, I hardly see anybody. But on our way back home from the grocery store, I saw a woman standing by a field and watching wild flowers. It was rare to see someone on the street. As I was getting closer, I perceived her looking at me with her face filled with a big smile that was totally familiar to me. I knew her.

She used to be a resident in the apartment building where I live. We often came across and shared some time together at the communal spa in the building. She is much older than I am, but we somehow got along well and chatted heartily every time we saw each other at the spa. About six years ago, she moved out of the apartment to the different one in the same town. I unexpectedly felt so sad because I had regarded her as if part of my family unconsciously since we met and talked almost everyday. However, when I saw her for the last time and she tentatively hinted her suggestion to exchange contact information and invite me to her new place, I just chickened out and dodged a reply. I wavered tremendously but didn’t have courage to step into a new friendship. We parted without even asking each other’s names. The spa had become quiet ever since. Occasionally from nowhere, a thought about how she has been doing came up to my mind while I was taking a bath with no one to chat. I regretted my decision not to be friends with her. I missed her more than I had thought.

And I saw her again after those years by this incredible coincidence. I jumped for joy to have bumped into her like this. Her big smile and loud laughter hadn’t changed a bit and she told me how she had been doing. After we chatted for a while, I sensed the time to say good-bye again was approaching. And I was swallowed by one single thought: Should we exchange contact information this time? I ran through a scenario in my head. If I asked her info here, she would expect me to get in touch later. Then if I got in touch with her, she would invite me to her place. Then if I went to see her, she would expect me to invite her back in my place next time. Then if we found little left to talk about, we would be distant gradually. Then if it broke off, I would regret my contact exchange of today retrospectively. While I was trying to see the future, she also tried to judge my feelings and tentatively brought up a plan to see each other again, like deja vu. The time to decide had come.

I had missed her. I had wanted to be friends with her. I made a wrong decision last time and this could be the second chance falling from the sky. On the other hand, I had too many bitter experiences about friendship and wanted to add no more. I felt harsh loneliness every time I lost friendship. The closer my friend and I were, the harder it was to be estranged. I tend to have high hopes and expect too much for someone I make friends with, that usually leads to painful disappointment when she or he doesn’t meet my expectation. I had had many friends and lost them. For me, getting along well isn’t enough to build friendship. I need to respect someone as a friend. People change. Once I can’t respect my friend any longer, my friendship is over. I also need to be accepted as who I am. That’s why most of my friends left me when I decided to become a musician. I wonder how I could ever start a new friendship as long as I know how I would feel when it ends. Disappointment would be huge this time all the more because I like her. I couldn’t bear the loneliness it would bring.

Since I was a child, I have struggled to escape from loneliness. I had searched for someone to get along, thought I found one, and realized I didn’t. Repeating the cycle had accumulated loneliness. I reached the point to afford no more loneliness long ago. But in the course of my life, I’ve got the solution. I think loneliness may be overestimated and it’s not so bad if you see it from a different perspective. Sometimes loneliness is freedom. Sometimes it’s self-esteem. It works for me to stop looking for the way not to be lonely, but accept to be lonely instead. To fend off loneliness, be lonely already.

I didn’t ask her contact information and neither did she mine after all. We said our good-byes without giving names again. We waved and resumed our ways in opposite directions. Immediately the blame on her crossed my mind that she should have pressed on our contact exchange. If she had cornered me and I had had no choice, I could have told. Why didn’t she simply ask me so that I could answer? No, I reconsidered, it was better as it went. I felt her kindness more than ever not to ask me and walked on with holding a lot of fresh eggs.

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My Fear and Hope by Hidemi Woods

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The Movie Summer Ensued

I hadn’t been to a movie theater for fifteen years. The film I saw at the theater fifteen years ago was Brad Pitt’s ‘Meet Joe Black’. It was surely a disappointing film but that wasn’t a reason why I stopped going to a theater.

Back then, I lived in the States and movie theaters there were clean, modern and comfortable. They had also a reasonable matinee price. And I moved back to Japan where the movies from the States became the foreign ones. Movie theaters in Japan hadn’t been modernized yet with cramped stiff seats, and didn’t have a reduced price like a matinee. A ticket cost about $17 that was too expensive for me. On top of that, every foreign film had Japanese captions at the bottom of the screen, which obstructed each scene. Those theater circumstances in Japan were the reasons why I stopped going.

But I like movies and had regularly watched them exclusively on the TV screen in my living room. My partner loves movies much more than I do. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday this year, his answer was a movie ‘Birdman’ at the theater. And for the first time in fifteen years, I got in the movie theater.

While I was away from them, Japanese theaters had been transformed dramatically into modern, clean, gorgeous ones. The seats were large with padded backs and arms. The rows were placed so steeply that I no longer have trouble with someone’s head in front of me. They were just like US theaters and I loved them instantly. They also had a variety of tickets of a reduced price. Japanese captions were still there, but I managed to ignore them.

‘Birdman’ was such a good film by which I was moved so much, and I was completely awake to the charm of a movie theater. When I was leaving, I found a piece of information that said an advance ticket for a coming movie ‘Tomorrowland’ came with a pin. The film was what I had been interested in and I’m a pin collector. Since the advance ticket had a reduced price already, getting a pin with it would make the price for the film even lower. I purchased the ticket, got the pin, and set out for a trip to U.S. wearing the pin before I saw the movie.

In Disney Resort, quite a few people approached me to talk about the pin. Most of them asked where I had gotten it. A cast member told me that the park had carried those and they had been sold out within a week. Those experiences made my expectations for the film higher. I saw it at the theater after I came back to Japan.

I was deeply moved to tears that didn’t stop falling. It was so hard for me to mute my sobbing. The last time I cried this hard on the film was when I saw ‘Field of Dreams’. I remember that I wrung my T-shirt at the bathroom that was soaking wet with my tears.

Only a couple of weeks after I saw ‘Tomorrowland’, I had an urge to see it again. As the nearest theater from my home had already ended showing it, I went to a distant theater. I was moved even more than the first time. I returned to that theater a few days later to see it for the third time. Then, as no theater around my home showed it any more, I took a trip to a theater in Tokyo by bullet train to see it for the fourth time. Considering the amount of money I had spent for ‘Tomorrowland’, I looked stupid myself. Still, I couldn’t stifle my urge and saw it for the fifth time at the same theater in Tokyo a few weeks later. A few more weeks later, I happened to know that the theater in Tokyo was the only one in Japan that still showed it, and would end that soon. If I missed this opportunity, I would never able to see it at the theater ever again. I felt I would be a fool if I didn’t see it one last time. I hopped on the bullet train yet again. The last week’s schedule for ‘Tomorrowland’ was moved to a late show slot, which meant a day trip was impossible for me because I couldn’t catch the last bullet train home. I stayed at a cheap hotel for the night to see it for the sixth time. My adventurous summer of ‘Tomorrowland’ had thus ended.

It reminded me of my teenage time when I was hooked on going to concerts of my favorite band. I’ve made an advance purchase of a ‘Tomorrowland’ Blue-ray and DVD set at Amazon and now can’t wait for the release. One thing I don’t understand is that it wasn’t a mega hit…

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The Return to Anaheim by Hidemi Woods

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