Hidemi Woods

Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.

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  • the new Kyoto

    the new Kyoto

    When I spent 40 minutes aboard the bullet train bound for Kyoto from Tokyo, an alarming notion popped into my head. “Did I miss Mt. Fuji?” It’s around this time that Mt. Fuji comes into view closely in the bullet train window. Somehow Mt. Fuji is a special mountain for Japanese people. It’s said that seeing the first sunrise of the year from the top of Mt. Fuji brings a happy new year. Many of them want to climb it once during their lifetime. They regard it as something holy and good luck. I myself try to see it every time I take a bullet train to Kyoto, and pray to it for a good trip. It was cloudy and rain looked imminent on that day of my latest trip to Kyoto. Whether the train already passed Mt. Fuji or it wasn’t visible because of thick clouds was uncertain. The outcome of the trip depended on Mt. Fuji. I felt that this trip might end terribly if I couldn’t see it, and I looked for it frantically. “There it is!” Above the dark clouds, its top section poked out clearly. “I see it! A nice trip is assured!” I was relieved and in high spirits. While I jinx it when I don’t see it, however, I’ve had horrible trips even when I saw a clear Mt. Fuji. Although I duly understand an outcome of a trip doesn’t have to do with whether I see it or not, there’s a reason why I’m nervous enough to pray to the mountain.

    A trip to Kyoto means homecoming and meeting my parents. Three out of every four visits, they give me a hard time. They insult me, deny me and complain everything about me. I sometimes feel my life is in danger when I’m with them because of their relentless attacks. Not to be strangled by them while I’m sleeping, I avoid spending the night at my parents’ home and stay at a hotel instead. I would rather not visit and see them, but I know it would make things worse. I couldn’t imagine how this particular trip would go especially as it was my first visit since my parents sold their house. They could no longer afford to keep their large house and its land inherited by our ancestors. Their financial crunch made them sell it where my family had lived for over 1000 years. They moved out to a small, old condominium outside Kyoto. Thinking about the situation they were now in, I couldn’t imagine their state of mind other than being nasty.

    The bullet train slid into Kyoto Station after two and a half hours. I stepped out on the platform for the first time as a complete tourist who didn’t have a house or a family there. To my surprise, Kyoto looked different. I couldn’t tell what and how, but it was decisively different from Kyoto I had known. It used to look grim and gloomy as if it was possessed by an evil spirit. But now it was filled with clean fresh air and looked bright. I would see all but mean people, but they also turned into nice people with smiles. I checked in a hotel and looked out the window. Rows of old gray houses were there. I used to think Kyoto was an ugly city with those somber houses, but I found myself looking at even them as a tasteful view. I’d never thought having the house I grew up in torn down and parting with my ancestor’s land would change the city itself altogether. Or maybe, it was me that changed…

    Episode from

    Leaving Kyoto: I felt as if I had officially become an author by Hidemi Woods

     

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  • Justice Is Served

    Justice Is Served

    The apartment building that I live in has a small gym for the residents. It’s called gym nominally, but in effect, it’s a space with a couple of massage chairs, few exercise machines most of which are outdated, a square exercise mat, and a TV set. Although it’s not a sufficient facility as a gym, I exercise there three or four times a week since it’s free for the residents.

    The biggest problem is a combination of the TV and the exercise mat spread in front of it. There are residents who are just watching TV lying down on the mat without exercising. Families are watching TV with the kids and let them play around there. They use the space as their second living room or a playground. They almost always set the TV volume so loud. To make things worse, Japanese TV programs are atrocious. Dramas are actors’ shrieking only without content, game shows are babble about nothing, and commercials are all close-up of young women. It’s nothing but a torture to ride an exercise bike engulfed by the picture and sound of those.

    Even when I exercise alone in the gym quietly without TV, someone who comes in after me walks straight towards the TV set and turns it on without hesitation. They don’t have minimum courtesy to ask if it’s all right to turn it on. I think they regard it as a TV room not a gym. To lessen my discomfort, I had started bringing my smartphone and earphones. I have to listen to music at max volume to compensate the loud TV.

    One day, a man came in when I was exercising alone. As usual, he turned on TV and began to watch it lying on the exercise mat. That’s the cue that I got used to now. I turned on my smartphone and began to play music in my earphones. On that particular day, I became really indignant at what he was doing because he was a regular and had annoyed me with the loud TV for a hundred times. I unconsciously muttered, “How dare you turn on TV?” The thing is, I was listening to the music at max volume and forgot to control the volume of my own voice. I didn’t mutter, but almost shouted the sentence. The man looked back at me with sheer terror on his face. I was as surprised at myself as he was.

    Those unpleasant gym days had been my norm for years because of the TV watchers. The other day, a man was watching TV as usual when I came into the gym. A familiar sight. But what happened next was completely different from the usual. As soon as he saw me coming in, he jumped up as if he got startled, and he turned off TV right away and left the gym. I wondered how angry and intimidating my look was. I started riding the bike peacefully without TV and noticed something below the TV screen. There was a sign. I got closer to read it. It said in big letters, ‘This TV is for an exercise video only. To watch general programs, use TV in the lobby. Management’ A miracle happened. Someone who understands what is right exists in this apartment building other than me. It was literally too good to be true. The existence of my kind of person was so hard to believe that I briefly thought that I sleepwalked to the gym one night because of excessive anger and put the sign by myself. I rubbed my eyes to see if it was an illusion. No. The sign was real. For the first time in a long while, I did a pleasant exercise at the gym. It was a refreshing, clean time in which I had all smile on my face…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • Split The Prize Money of $50,000

    Split The Prize Money of $50,000

    It took my partner and I the whole past year to put together a book by selecting stories about my family from ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’, writing some new stories and re-editing them. When the book was close to go on sale, my partner found out about Amazon Breakthrough Award and was lured on to an entry for it. His excitement about it was caused by a $50,000 advance for the winner.

    There were several qualifications for the entry. Firstly, it had to be fiction. Secondly, no selection or collection from what had been already published was allowed. Lastly, it’s author had to be one person. We pondered a lot and came to the reluctant conclusion that we regarded our book as an “I” novel although everything written in there was what really happened. Also, we decided to stop the publication of our existing ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’ e-books at Kindle. We cleared the two qualifications, but the last one was a toughie. Since we had published everything in the name of 88th Planet that is a unit name, we needed to change the author name to my name, Hidemi Woods. That drew an argument between us over who wrote the stories.

    They were mixed with what I wrote on my own from the beginning to the end, and what my partner chose interesting experiences of mine, wrote down outlines in Japanese, and then I constructed them to the whole story in English by adding details. Considering his involvement, it wasn’t fair to eliminate his name from the author. To make it consistent, we also considered using my name for our music in place of the unit name. We had been talking about it seriously for a few weeks.

    Ridiculously enough, we even talked about how we would split the prize money of $50,000. I had been moping for the demise of ‘Hidemi’s Rambling’ e-books even though they hardly sold. When we settled on Hidemi Woods for the author name and everything for the entry was prepared at last, my partner found out that there was a length qualification. Our book was simply too short for the entry. We were brought back to our senses and gave up the entry.

    I regretted our useless deliberations and felt disappointed about losing $50,000 that we wouldn’t have won even if we had entered the competition. The funniest thing was our desperate attitude toward a blog that we had started as a break from music in the first place. Our e-books are on sale as before and the new book has been published, as non-fiction, but in the name of Hidemi Woods like a relic of the foolish fuss…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • Stressful Relaxation

    Stressful Relaxation

    After I completed recording the main vocals for my new song in August, I came down with a cold. I got over most of it within a week, but a throat condition remained bad. It has been persistent ever since and I still can’t shake off this nagging condition. My throat hasn’t reverted to normal yet, which inclines me to anxiety. I try to return to health by relaxing and warming myself at the communal gym and spa inside my apartment complex every day.

    Those facilities are free to the residents while there is a catch. Their operating hours are limited and they close early in the evening. By the time I finished working and eating dinner, I usually run out of time for going there. I end up doing the dishes and changing into a gym suit in a mad rush and dash toward them. It’s like I go through a time trial before relaxation.

    Then, after I’m successfully in time for the operating hours, most of the time what awaits me there is something annoying. For example, a man comes into the gym while I’m on an exercise bike and turns on the TV that he makes blare right in front of me. His girlfriend joins him later and they lie down on the exercise mat while watching rubbish before my bike. “This is the gym, not your living room! And not the place for TV!” That’s what I gulp down with effort instead of utter. I’m forced to curtail my exercise and go into the communal spa.

    There, the residents take their babies and infants with them. They shriek, cry and go on a rampage. The mothers let them relieve themselves in the spa not in the toilet although the toilet is right there at the locker room, and poop is often lying on the floor. “This is the spa, not the toilet! And not the place for infants!” That’s what I gulp down with effort instead of utter, again. I submerge myself in the jacuzzi with the babies who may urinate next to me at this moment.

    While I’m taking a shower, the announcement that tells the spa is now closing comes from the speaker with a melody of Auld Lang Syne. Now I have to finish up quickly. I rush out to the locker room, hurried to put on my clothes and make barely in time before all the lights are shut down automatically as the operating hours are over. I’m the last one left there when the spa is in the complete darkness. I’m so accustomed to it that I always bring a small LED lamp with me. “10 p.m. for a closing time is too early! Lights should be kept on at least!” That’s what I gulp down, but sometimes utter for this once, as I’m alone in the dark.

    I dry my hair with a dim light from my small LED and leave. My brutally hectic time of the day finally ends like this. Thus, relaxation is so hard to get. I wonder when my throat returns to a good condition…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • A Bloody Smudge

    A Bloody Smudge

    When I was in the shower the other night, a drop of rinsed water from my body sponge spattered right into my right eye. I washed my eye in haste over and over so as not to get germs. It was one of those things that happen all the time in our daily life and I didn’t worry so much. I actually had forgotten about it by the time I went to sleep.

    The next morning I stood in front of the bathroom sink with sleepy eyes as usual and saw my face in the mirror. In it, my right eye had a large smudge of blood in the white. My drowsy brain got electrified and I was instantly wide awake. It wasn’t simply bloodshot but a stain of blood spread in the half of the eye. It was ominous enough to frighten me badly. I remembered the water spatter in the shower, but it seemed too small to cause this big damage.

    Is this a foretaste of some kind of a serious disease? Is a heart attack or something imminent? Am I going blind? Do I need to rush to the hospital that I hate so much and always keep away? Besieged by all kinds of sinister questions, I remembered I’ve often heard a bad reputation that the only hospital in my small town in the mountains has no good equipment nor good doctors. At the same time, I remembered a scene in some movie I once saw in which a man had the similar bloody smudge in his eye when he was about to die.

    I sat at the table for breakfast across my partner with a mountainous amount of fear. As soon as he glanced at me, he stopped crunching cereal and turned pale. I asked him what was wrong and he answered that it was my eye. He looked into it for a moment then said that his eye sight became white out and couldn’t see anything. He started sweating heavily and claimed that sweat didn’t stop pouring out. He left for the bathroom in the middle of breakfast.

    His reaction threw me deeper in terror. My eye with a smudge of blood must have been so horrible that he became sick. Since he’s a big fan of a TV drama ‘The Walking Dead’, he may have thought one of the zombies finally came to reality and appeared to him. The situation was reversed and he looked more ill than I was. About ten minutes later, thankfully, he felt better and resumed his cereal.

    I was anxious all day long. I imagined I might fall flat at any moment. I might go unconscious or blind. Even if I kept surviving, I couldn’t go outside with this eye on my face especially because I foolishly care my appearance too much. With fear clawing hold of me, I spent the day moving slowly and quietly as if I was living in total darkness.

    In the evening, my partner who had looked up my symptom on the Internet told me it was perfectly nothing wrong and would disappear by itself gradually in one to two weeks. That sent me the light from above with the angels’ choir. It was nothing! Suddenly I felt like I breathe again, and couldn’t feel any stupider. I wondered why I didn’t look up online by myself first thing in the morning. I had been dreadful all day and wasted the day just for nothing. As it turned out, all I needed was to wait for the smudge to disappear. I would pass the coming one to two weeks by donning this eye, avoiding acquaintances, trying to see as less residents as possible on the hallway of my apartment building, wearing sunglasses when eating out, and generally hiding away. While I was relieved and cheerful about that I wasn’t ill, another depressing feeling seized me as I thought about my life in hiding for the coming weeks…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com