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…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.532

I spent my schooldays from junior high to college at a Catholic school not for religious reasons but for my mother’s vanity. She wanted me to attend the most prestigious school in Kyoto in order to brag about it. With no religious background, I encountered quite a few unfamiliar events at school that held Catholic ceremonies regularly. The school often celebrated the Mass, which was an entirely new and different culture to me and I hadn’t the slightest idea what they were doing. Christian students sat in the front row with white lace veils on their heads at the assembly hall. The priest gave them something that looked like a soft snack and they ate it. I regarded it as the believers’ benefits to have a snack during the Mass. The school held the annual Candle Service near Christmas. Before my first-ever Candle Service at junior high, Sister told us to bring something from home as a donation for the Candle Service. She added for those who couldn’t think of what to bring, that bars of soap would do. I had no clue what the Candle Service was. All I could imagine was I would receive some sort of service from Sisters. I looked forward to it because I thought Sisters would serve cake or tea like a Christmas party, and I could get it just with a bar of soap. But as it turned out, we just stood in line holding a candle at the dark assembly hall and sang several hymns endlessly to the poor accompaniment of the orchestra club students. While singing, we got on the stage one by one and put a bar of soap or other donations into a cardboard box. When all the students finished putting their donations into the box, the service was over without any cake. The school had a big, tall fir tree across from the entrance gate. It stood by the side of one of the school buildings like a wall decoration. Its top reached as high as the third floor of the building. Judging from its size, it was planted there when two Sisters came from US after WWII and opened the school. Around Christmastime, the tree was decorated with ornaments and made the school look beautiful. I was a member of the student board when I was a sophomore. Until then, I hadn’t known that the decoration was the student board’s task. I felt exhilarating for the first time as a student board member. The boring board revived and every member had so much fun decorating the tree together. The tree was too tall to decorate the upper part from outside by a ladder. We got inside the building, put an ornament on the tip of a broomstick and stretched it out of the window of the third floor. Gold tinsel garlands were thrown toward the tree from the forth floor window. It was the biggest Christmas tree I had ever decorated. I had had all those Christian events and classes in the Bible for years until college and yet I never really understood the meaning. I left school, got out into the world, and worked as a musician. Through the years of making music that hasn’t been paying, I feel I finally know why I continue and have spent so much time and energy to create a good song, which hasn’t brought me money or fame. It took a long time to understand, but better late than never, I suppose…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.531

I came across the special offer on the ticket of a low-cost carrier on the Internet. I was going to take a trip to California in the holiday season of next year and have saved money for it. But to take this time-sale offer, I decided to bring forward the trip to next May and booked it. Even though the fare is drastically discounted, the one between Japan and US is still incredible for a cheap person like me who spares money by the cent every day. Add to that the hotel stay and the total is so astronomical that it almost makes me faint. Not only the cost, but also the plan itself seems to be fantasy. The flight is six months away and there are too many uncertainties for the plan to take shape. What if an Ebola epidemic spread all over the world? Humans might become extinct by the time of my flight. I wouldn’t exist let alone the flight would be cancelled. What if Japan fell into default because of a chain of its poor economic policies? Or, what if a strong earthquake hit Tokyo as a rumor has been going about? I would be scouting around food and supplies instead of packing for the trip. What if I got sick? What if terrorism occurred and the airport security got tighter than ever? It would be unbearable since I was once stopped at the security check as their scanner spotted a coil on my notebook in my bag. What if passengers on my flight started a fight over reclining the seat and the plane made an emergency landing? What if I said a careless joke to a flight attendant and got arrested as a terrorist? By booking the flight, I paid a large sum of money and started the next six months until the flight with various kinds of worries and all of what-ifs. Nevertheless, both the considerable expense and all those anxieties can’t beat my surprisingly strong desire to go to California. What I dread most is to become dumb by staying put in a stifling, easy, unchanging country like Japan…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.530

I visited my hometown in Kyoto the other day. When I visit there, I usually stay at a hotel instead of my parents’ house, as I don’t get along well with them. This time, I took the municipal subway to the hotel. I hadn’t ridden the subway in ages. To the best of my memory, the last time I rode it was when I submitted some necessary papers at the college I had attended in order to drop out of it. While the line had been stretched and added, the station and the cars’ exterior stayed almost unchanged, and the sight of them brought back my old memories. The subway service started when I was a high school student. The municipality took off the streetcar for good in transition. My home was near the streetcar route and we used it heavily. Since the subway ran only the center of the city, our life without the streetcar became inconvenient. My father and I used to grumble about it together repeatedly, saying the municipality favored those who lived in downtown. But once the subway began to run, I found that taking it to school was more convenient than taking the public bus all the way, which I had been doing. I switched and took the subway to school every day. Everything looked new and cool to me. I even bought a ticket that had the date of the math teacher’s birthday stamped on, and made a bookmark out of it to give it as a birthday present to him on whom I had a crush. I was such a pathetic teenager. I also remembered a ride from school after I got my result of the preliminary entrance examination of Kyoto University. Although a grade of eight hundred was needed to get in, I got a grade of merely mid-six hundred. Realizing I had no way to get in the university that I had wanted to so badly and I threw two years of preparing down the drain, I began to shiver on the subway. My breathing became difficult and I thought we were out of air because of the subway system failure. By the time I reached home, I had run a fever of 102 degrees. A month later, I took the subway to a different university. That one was rated lower than Kyoto University and the examination was easy. I was quite sure I had passed and went to see my number on the announcement board. And mine wasn’t there which meant I had failed. On my subway ride back home, I saw my future was heading down to the bottom of darkness. I felt as if my life would never come out of this long dark tunnel. Looking back on it, I hardly have good memories about the subway. It’s not the subway’s fault, though. I have too many bad memories about Kyoto itself…

Hidemi’s Rambling No.529

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…