Hidemi’s Rambling No.539

I was walking beside the math teacher on whom I had had a crush, on the day of a school excursion when I was a sophomore at high school. He asked me which university I was applying to. When he heard my answer, he asked me again, “Do you think you can jump across this paddy field to the other side?” The paddy along the path was over thirty feet in width and I dismissed it as absolutely impossible. “That’s exactly what you’re trying to do for the university,” he said. I resented as I thought he would encourage me since I had gotten full marks in almost every math test. But he was right. I eventually failed all the universities I applied to and my dream to work as a super businesswoman at the leading company was shattered. I lost confidence in myself, lost sense of purpose in my life, and ended up being a freshman in the women’s college that belonged to the same school I attended when I was in junior high and high school. The entrance examination of that college was the only one I passed although I hated to go there and took the exam for my worst-case scenario. Students from the same high school were entitled to get in the college without entrance exam if they didn’t apply to other universities and colleges. While I endured three years of studying for a different university, my classmates just had been having fun, and I settled in the same college as them who didn’t have to take the exam. I was humiliated every day when they spotted me at the campus and asked me, “What are you doing here?” or said, “I thought you were going to the better school!” Everyone in the college including faculty seemed dumb to me in those miserable days. Even the slip-on sandals that the president would neatly leave in front of her office door made me furious and I kicked them away to the hallway with all my force. One day I was called into the school office. The staff told me to see a psychiatrist who was temporarily assigned to the college. I had no idea why I needed to see a psychiatrist. I entered her small office and she welcomed me with her warm smile. She just kept saying to me, “It’s all right. Everything is all right. You don’t have to worry anything. It’s all right.” That was all she said. Only two freshmen including me were called in and I asked the other girl what it was all about when I bumped into her. She guessed that had to do with a survey the college had conducted for all freshmen. She suggested that we were called in because we checked yes on a question whether we ever want to commit suicide. I was astonished at the fact that other students except two of us had never felt like killing themselves up until in their late teens. I strongly felt they were the ones who needed to see a psychiatrist, not us. I was slowly, gradually coming to grips with who I was. I wasn’t made for a businesswoman to begin with. Being a musician seemed much more like myself…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.538

In the time of my school days, women in Japan were mostly housewives. It was considered that women quit working when they get married. One of my mother’s old female classmates stayed single and had an administrative job at IBM in Tokyo, which was so rare at that time. To me, continuing to work after marriage was more natural than being a housewife since my mother went to work every day. Only, I didn’t want to be like her who worked as a farmer in a country. I would rather have become a sophisticated businesswoman like her old classmate at IBM. It was necessary to graduate from the first-class university to be hired at a large famous company like IBM. I started to study for the university’s entrance examination when I was a freshman at high school. My daily life had inevitably changed. I had gradually distanced myself from my cool friends with whom I used to hang out all the time, and spent much time with my new would-be-a-doctor friend. She introduced me the whole new world. She was sincere, courteous and refined, and respected her parents who were both doctors. My study days were troublesome. Because I tended to listen to music instead of studying in my room at home, I studied at the library as much as possible. There, I spent the time solving math problems that I loved to do so much. Although Japan used to have a stupid system for the university entrance exam that the high average mark of all the seven subjects decided the school, I didn’t feel like studying other six subjects beside mathematics. I just studied math day and night, even floating a sheet of a problem in a plastic bag in the tub while I was taking a bath. I knew I needed to study other than math, but I didn’t realize my biggest weakness back then – I can’t do anything I don’t like. As the exam drew near, pressure had begun to seize me. I pulled out the plug of my stereo not to listen to records and stuck the plug to the wall with a note of ‘Patience!’ A small thing provoked my fury toward my sister with no reason one evening, and I found myself gripping her by the throat. I came to myself when I realized I was choking her. She told my father that I tried to kill her and he suggested to me that I should see a psychiatrist. Every practice examination showed I wouldn’t pass the university I was applying to, but I relied on my IQ heavily. I believed that if my brain ran at full blast on the very day of exam, my high IQ would wring out a high score by recalling what I didn’t even remember. Otherwise, it would be proved that my high IQ was a worthless, useless, decorative-only nothing although my whole life had depended on it. I couldn’t possibly accept that kind of notion. I refused, by any means…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.537

The snows reached eight feet high on the ground in a mountainous town where I live, which is customary every winter here. I began to feel suffocated and decided to get away for a few days. As I came across the bargain price for a moderate hotel adjacent to Tokyo Disney Resort, I took a trip there with my partner. Only after a couple of tunnels on the bullet train, snow disappeared and a blue sky spread out. It was already another world. We arrived at Tokyo station and found people there weren’t bundled up, some of them were even without coats. We, on the other hand, were wearing hooded down coats and I additionally had long winter boots on. Winter in Tokyo was warm and it felt hot to us whose bodies have been adjusted to the cold of our town. We were sweaty, and I was walking around with my folding fan flapping. When you stay away from a city life in a remote town and go back to the city after a while, you notice a change in the world clearly. It happened to me this time and I was surprised at the speed of changes. I saw many large strollers inside the train that were obstacles to other passengers. It was frequently a man who pushed a stroller. People wore mean, rough clothes. I used to be annoyed so much every time at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant by swarms of housewives and their shrieking children, but not a single kid was spotted when I had lunch at one of those restaurants. All those things were uncommon when I lived in the city. Although women’s positions in Japanese society had stayed lowly no matter how long and loudly clamored for improvement, the number of housewives in Japan dramatically decreased so easily once the economy continued to decline. It’s merely four years since I moved out of the city, but with many things I had never seen before, I realized Japan has changed. At a hotel where we stayed, there were many elegant guests from Asian countries and less Japanese. It was supposed to be a decent hotel, but a group of the guests staying in the rooms around ours were noisy at the hallway. My partner had to call the front desk for complaint. I tried to enjoy the stay at least for the value for what we had paid that wasn’t a small amount to me. At the end of the trip, I was exhausted by my own effort to get the trip pay our money. On our way home, we waited in line for the train to Tokyo. When we got on, young men cut in and snatched the seats. I was convinced Japan has become a poor country…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.536

As a two-year contract on my smartphone expires soon, I decided to switch to a low-cost plan of a new phone company and to get a new smartphone that can be used both in Japan and US. I had been looking into the market for about six months and learned that choosing a plan and a phone was really cumbersome nowadays. The price is changing almost every week, the new feature is being added all the time, and the new model is coming up one after the other. To keep up with that speed was so hard for me. It would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t been a cheap person. I would have just sat at the counter in a phone shop and gotten whatever a salesperson recommended. Unfortunately I don’t trust a salesperson and I’m not rich. I simply can’t satisfy myself unless I find the best buy on my own and get it during a special promotion. That required an enormous amount of research, patience, and energy, not to mention time. After all, I got a satisfactory model and signed up for a low-cost plan. The phone came with a USB charger, but I needed one more for travel. The phone maker’s website told that its charger is exclusively made and a mass-market charger can’t be used. I bought the relatively-high-in-price charger that I still can’t see the difference from a common charger, which makes me feel that I lost money. I started using my new smartphone full of glee anyway. It’s bigger than my old one and has a better view on the screen while I’m afraid if I don’t get a good grip and drop it. I needed a case but couldn’t find one that perfectly fits because it’s not a major model. Cool cases for iPhone are everywhere and I now realized how popular it is. I settled on a pouch-type iPhone case that had a bargain price, and squeezed my phone into it. I mustered all my ideas and devices to get and use a new phone at the lowest price. Looking back the long, troublesome process, I’m not so sure if I saved money or it was costly in various ways…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.535

Since I booked a low-cost carrier flight to LAX from Japan, now I’ve looking for a hotel to stay in California. The best scenario is to find a high-class hotel at a bargain price, but it’s not easy to come across such a good deal. I have to decide between a cheap hotel and a moderate one. My partner and I happened to stay at a low-class hotel in Japan the other day to shop at the outlet mall that is far from home. The stay cost $45 per room including breakfast for two. The room was very small and there was hardly any space to put our bags and stuff. It had two beds and the smaller one was set above the bigger one like a bunk bed. I was going to sleep in the upper bed, but couldn’t climb the ladder which too-slim, round pole rungs hurt the back of my feet unbearably. Although my partner managed to reach the narrow bunk bed, he was afraid of falling all night long and woke up exhausted with a shallow sleep. That hotel boasted a huge bathtub. In their website and on their signboard out front, they clamorously touted the size of a bathtub and the comfort of the bath time. Because I saw the description of their bathtubs that they said are so huge and we could stretch our legs in relaxingly so many times, the tub had grown gigantic in my imagination. Then I found just a normal-sized tub in the room. The restaurant to have a free breakfast was a small space, looking like an old cheap food court. TV was on instead of the background music like a cheap bar. But there I showed my real ability as a cheap person to enjoy a free food. It was an all-you-can-eat breakfast with a wide variety that was delicious. I literally ate all I could eat and felt full and almost sick. But we were the only ones who appreciated it so much. It was a weekday and almost all the guests were businessmen on a business trip. There was no female guest except for me. It seemed they didn’t have enough time for breakfast in any case. Some of them just gulped orange juice and dashed out. Some sat on the tip of their chairs and swallowed down food on their small plates hurriedly. Aside from the breakfast, the cheap hotel deprived us of sleep and exhausted us for this stay. When I stayed at a hotel like that in Florida a long time ago, I had the biggest fleabite in my life. These experiences may tell me not to choose a cheap hotel for a trip to US. On the other hand, the cost of staying at a moderate hotel gives me a headache…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.534

The news told the other day that it snowed unusually heavily in Kyoto where I was born and grew up, and ten inches of snow covered the city. Only ten inches made the news since it snows in Kyoto merely once or twice a year. For that reason, snowing was an exciting lucky event for me when I lived there. White snow covered the old, brownish somber city and made it look a little better. I vividly remember the fun I had as a child when it snowed and covered the ground rarely thick one morning. The front yard of our house turned into a vast white mattress, which was a view I had never seen before. I had a snowball fight with my father who hadn’t been hostile to me yet like he is today. He deliberately took my snowball attacks in his face and yelled repeatedly, “You got me! I surrender!” My younger sister was still a baby and I was able to monopolize the fun and my father for once. My mother usually didn’t allow me to make a racket but snow softened her and she took photographs of our snowball fight. It surely was one of the happiest moments of my childhood. Heavy snow came again when I was a high school student. I was riding the local bus to school with my friend and other students, feeling gloomy as I felt every time I was on my way to school. When the bus arrived at the bus stop near the school, we saw a teacher stand there. As soon as the door of the bus opened, he told us that school was canceled due to snow. The bus I took ran a loop route around Kyoto, which meant it eventually returned to where I got on. My friend and I didn’t even have to get off the bus and went straight back to home. It became a magical ride by snow, with us feeling over the moon and giggling and laughing all the way. I was walking with my partner when the next heavy snow hit Kyoto. Only a few months had passed since we first met and we were just friends then. I was uplifted by snow and caught him a surprise with a snowball. It directly hit his face and I burst into laughter. What I didn’t understand was his look. He was stunned, rather shocked, with his eyes bulged. According to his theory, adults don’t have a snowball fight and I was the first and only one who broke his theory. I just loved snow so much. Now, I live in a town where it snows all day every day during winter and snow mounts up on the ground higher than my height. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night by a sense of claustrophobia. If I had seen my future living like this when I was a child in Kyoto, I would have thought I would move to Alaska or the North Pole, or the earth simply would have the glacial period. Life turns in an unexpected way. People who live in this town greet each other saying unpleasantly “Here it comes again!” when the first snow falls. I still feel joyful for snow, and I guess I haven’t become a local yet while living here for four years now…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.533

New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday in Japan. It’s as big as Thanksgiving and Christmas put together. It’s a day when millions of people visit shrines and temples wearing kimono or their best clothes and pray for good luck by offering money into the boxes. Before midnight, shrines and temples begin to seethe with people. I used to be one of them when I lived in my hometown, but now I just watch the tumult on TV at home every year. I recall New Year’s Day of 2011 as my merriest one. Back then, I still lived in the apartment in a suburb of Tokyo. The plan to move into this rural town had been already arranged, but I hadn’t moved out yet. From the last minutes of New Year’s Eve to the first minutes of New Year’s Day, shrines and temples all over Japan ring the bell 108 times. 108 represents the number of worldly desires of each person. The bell ring is supposed to take them away one by one for the new year. I was listening to the faint sound of the bell that a temple near my apartment was ringing when 2011 arrived. I opened a bottle of champagne, which is too expensive for me to drink except on this day every year, prepared the New Year’s meal that’s not traditional but of my own style, and had it with my partner who looked somewhat to be in bad shape, while watching a comedy live show on TV. After I watched the first sunrise of the year over Mt. Fuji on TV, I turned on my PC and found that my new song that I had spent several years to complete was put up on i-Tunes and Amazon for the first time. I felt like a new life for me had started with the new year and it would get better from now on, with my new apartment in a new place in the wings and my new song made public. I guess the reason why New Year’s Day of 2011 was the merriest for me isn’t just an expensive champagne or the New Year’s meal or the comedy show. It’s because I felt so much hope. I continued watching comedy TV shows until noon that day feeling so good, and when I was about to go to bed, my partner confessed that he had caught a cold and was undoubtedly sick…