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…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.540

My grandfather and I used to go to the department store together when I was a small child. He had a pass that entitled senior citizens to a free ride of the municipal streetcar. He usually said, “Not using the free pass is waste of money,” and tried to take the streetcar as much as he could although he had no place to go. As part of his useless effort, he often went to the department store where he didn’t have to go at all, and made me accompany him. While he didn’t have anything to buy, he strolled around all the floors. To get only one different floor he used the elevator that had an operating girl inside who would push the buttons and say the floor information, and the other girl outside who would close the outside iron door manually. It seemed he enjoyed the ride as a free attraction. His typical behavior was to ask a salesclerk the price whenever he spotted something expensive that he had no intention to buy, and to exclaim loudly, “How expensive!” He often looked into the costly merchandise that was on display in the glass case, asked the price, cried his ‘how expensive, and just walked on. When he was looking into the glass case of fountain pens intently one time, the salesclerk asked if he wanted her to take some pens out of the case and show them to him. He pointed out one by one and the clerk put them out on a sheet of velvet. He asked the price each time and at each answer he exclaimed, “How expensive!” “Outrageous!” “That much for a pen?”“Really, really expensive!” His loud remarks rang out through the quiet, elegant floor. After five or six pens were laid on the velvet, he just thanked the clerk casually and left the counter as if nothing happened. Even as a small child, I duly sensed his behavior was fundamentally embarrassing. That was why I hated to go out with him so much. In the lunchtime, he would order the most inexpensive noodle at the food-court-like restaurant on the top floor of the department store. He always ordered one dish for two of us and asked for an empty small bowl to divide the noodle into two. While I ate the smaller portion, he eagerly poured free tea, saying, ”Make your stomach full with free tea if that’s not enough!” We usually had a lot of free tea since we were hungry with only one noodle, and the huge kettle on our table went empty fast. The table was shared with eight people and each table had one kettle. He would start going around other tables for a full kettle. Many kettles were sometimes empty and he would go to the far end of the restaurant for free tea while checking the remaining content of every single kettle along the way. He would loudly say, “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free tea!” right next to a customer who was drinking a glass of soda. In those cases, he would return to our table with a kettle in his hand as if he had hit a gold mine. Even a small child like me understood that his habit was extremely embarrassing and I really hated to go out with him. He did all of these things so happily by wearing tattered clothes and shoes with a hole, and he clearly enjoyed it immensely. I grew up and noticed there was a terrifying thing such as atavism. When I visit an outlet mall, I first go through price tags to see the percentage of discount, and if the percentage is big enough, start looking the merchandise itself. Last time, my partner asked me to quit that habit of mine. He wants me to look at the merchandise first, then the price tag. I don’t order a drink at the food court because it has a free water server. I also bring an empty plastic drink bottle from home and refill it with the free water for later breaks. “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free water,” I usually murmur in my mind…