Hidemi Woods

Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.

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  • I Myself Am Stingy

    I Myself Am Stingy

    The administration of my apartment is stingy. All the communal areas in the building are dim because they try to keep the light off as much as possible. The decorative indirect lighting at the lobby is always off. The light at the gym didn’t come on until sundown. I exercise in the morning almost in the dark when it’s bad weather. They had plucked off light bulbs one by one from the locker room of the spa, and it’s only half-lit now even though all the switches are on.

    The air conditioner there is turned off and a small electric fan is the only recourse in the summertime. The building’s communal TV antenna is too old to receive all channels. I’ve been unable to watch some new channels and complained to the administration about it for over a year, but they wouldn’t replace it with a new one.

    Finally, the light of the fire escape has been turned off since sensors were introduced a couple of months ago. This apartment has the fire escape inside the building that is also for a regular use. I prefer stairs to an elevator and use them every day. But now the whole staircase is in complete darkness when I open an exit door on the hallway. There is a time lag between the sensor and the light. Two steps forward are needed to have the sensor on and then it’s a long time before the fluorescent light comes on. By the time the light is on, I come down half the floor groping in the darkness. I’m certain people are tumbling down in case of an emergency.

    There was an annual fire drill the other day. The whole light of the fire escape was turned on beforehand for the drill. It’s meaningless to turn the emergency light on only for the very day of drill. I suspect that the administration know they infringe the fire law. I myself am stingy and my own apartment is dim all the time. But when an object to which I pay money is stingy, I can’t stop my endless complains. Meanwhile, I recall that one of the reasons I chose this apartment was a low monthly maintenance fee. If the administration requires a higher fee in exchange for full lighting, I may well ask them to turn off the light…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • Living in The Mountains

    Living in The Mountains

    It’s April, and yet it has snowed hard here in the region where I live. The snow still lies about four feet. Under those conditions, though, I caught a pollen allergy out of the blue.

    I came home from shopping one evening and developed symptoms of a runny nose, sneezing and a thick head. At first, I thought I had caught a cold. As a person who fears pretty much everything, I always dread having a cold. I haven’t had it since 2005, by taking vitamin supplements daily, gurgling right after coming home and sleeping well. I couldn’t accept a cold despite those unremitting efforts. Besides, I didn’t have a fever or a sore throat. My partner told me those were typical symptoms of a pollen allergy, which he suffers every spring. That explained it, as I felt itchy in my eyes and Japanese cedars with reddish leaves have appeared out of the snow in places on the nearby mountains.

    I had never had a pollen allergy in my life. When I have it, it’s acute and so early. Even my partner hasn’t had it yet this year. Until I moved in here, I had had pleasant spring every year while my partner spent it miserably with sneezing and sniffling. Not to develop the allergy, I had used extra caution by wearing a medical mask outside even though I hadn’t had it yet. My long-term precautions didn’t pay off. Living in the mountains brought my efforts naught…

    Japanese TV networks have aired fewer and fewer US TV dramas and Hollywood movies in recent years. Japanese satellite TV stations air some, but more and more of them have been dubbed into Japanese. I really hate dubbed programs. They are poorly dubbed by disastrously bad dubbing actors. It’s decisively strange to see Brad Pitt talking in Japanese. And the lines are misinterpreted badly enough to ruin the whole story. I just can’t stand watching them.

    This spring, a couple of new satellite TV stations started to broadcast in Japan. One of them is a totally dream channel for me, which airs old and new dramas and shows from America’s ABC, in English, for free. Since the announcement, I’d waited for the broadcasting for months with indescribable excitement. The station handed out a free exclusive remote for the channel at Seven Eleven stores as its opening promotion. I rushed to get one at a store and had anxiously counted down the days until the broadcasting started by holding the free remote in my hand.

    When the D-Day finally came, I found nothing but a black screen on the channel. Amid enormous disappointment, I looked up on the Internet, and realized the satellite dish of my apartment building is too out of date to receive the new stations. The dish is communal and I can’t replace it. I wrote a letter to the board but haven’t heard from it. I have a very slim chance, as it would cost money.

    Every single day, I tune to my dream station in the hope that it comes on by some chance. And every time, I sighed to a pitch-black screen…

    I came through my first winter in this town that is famous for its long, severe cold and heavy snowfall, but the heater of my apartment didn’t. It got broken after heavy use of this winter. Although I used it for one winter, it’s 22 years old since the apartment was equipped with it when it was built.

    A repair person from a gas company came over and told me that an antifreeze leak had broken a small part in the heater. The broken part can be easily replaced, which makes the heater operate again, but the problem is to fix the leak. Replacing an antifreeze pump will stop the leak, only the manufacturer no longer makes a pump. My options are either replace the whole heater just for the pump, or continue to use the current one by filling antifreeze by myself while it keeps leaking.

    The heater is combined with the boiler for hot water that works fine. If I replaced the heater, it would replace the working boiler as well. And the cost would be mountainous. I strongly insist that a manufacturer should keep making parts for their products forever. The repair person replaced the broken small part for free on condition that I would consider getting a new heater from his company. I considered, and decided to use the current one until it completely breaks, fearing an impending failure day after day…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • Nature is A Luxury

    Nature is A Luxury

    Nearly one year has passed since I moved from a suburb of Tokyo to this small town in the mountains. Similar season reminds me of those hectic days in the previous year. Having spent a whole year in a new town, I like it here after all. What’s so special above all is varied beauty of nature, and comfort from songs of birds and brooks. I’ve realized nature is a luxury.

    Another thing I like about here is that this is a region where an earthquake seldom occurs. Although it is 14 months since the massive earthquake hit northern Japan, the Tokyo area has still had frequent small earthquakes. It’s also reported that the probability of a big one there within a few years is high. I would be crushed with stress if I still lived around Tokyo.

    Everything was new in my first year here and I had had exciting days with wonders. But I suspect that it will become boring from the second year on, as things may just repeat year after year. It would be terrible if it affected my brain and made it too dull to write music. Having a stress-free life is a blessing, but what if it has already begun to make me slow-witted…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • A Woman with An Iron Heart!

    A Woman with An Iron Heart!

    The nearest train station from my home that I usually use has no station attendants on site. All it has are a ticket vending machine and an emergency phone. There’s no ticket gate either. A passenger gets a ticket from the machine and goes directly onto the platform. Upon arrival, they put the used tickets into a box on the wall. There are several no-attendant stations like that along this local line.

    That means it’s possible to ride free if you get on and off the train both at those stations. It’s kind of an honorable system that whether you pay for the ticket or not all depends on your conscience.

    Of course riding a train without a ticket is a crime. To crack down on it, a conductor sometimes makes spot checks on the train. He or she checks all passengers’ tickets and stamps on them. If someone has a ticket for the minimum fare, the conductor asks the destination and collects the full fare. Since many passengers make the payments on the train, I suspect the honorable system doesn’t work so well.

    I’ve once seen a passenger without a ticket caught by the conductor. She received the conductor’s severe rebuke and paid a lot of money. Some passengers try so badly not to be caught when a conductor begins the spot check. Their common ways are simply running away from the conductor by moving back and forth between the cars. A conductor sometimes gets off the train and steps onto the platform at a no-attendant station to check the tickets of the passengers who get off there. In those cases, a passenger who cheats on the fare walks toward the far end of the platform opposite to the conductor. The train eventually has to leave on schedule and the conductor doesn’t have enough time to go up to the passenger for the ticket. The passenger waits there for the train to leave with the conductor back on while pretending to rummage through his or her bag for the ticket that doesn’t exist.

    The most impressive passenger I’ve seen was a young woman who pretended to sleep in her seat when the conductor asked her to show a ticket. No matter how loudly the conductor asked repeatedly, she wouldn’t wake up. Although he almost shouted in her ear in the end of the persistent demands for the ticket, she was still asleep. I thought if she wasn’t acting, she was dead. After he went back, her acting finished and she woke up. Unfortunately for her, the conductor was as determined as she was, and came back to her again. She was caught this time, but pretended to look for her ticket and declared she had lost it somewhere. A woman with an iron heart! She told her departure and destination stations which credibility was questionable, and paid the fare to the conductor after all.

    A stingy person like me buys a ticket each time. Even so, I feel nervous and have shifty eyes every time a conductor walks through the train cars. That’s because I may or may not devise some ways to save money for the ticket, but I leave it to your conjecture…

    Episode from

    Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • A Trip after The Storm

    A Trip after The Storm

    Although I had received “the last letter to me” quoted as written from my mother a few months before in which she wrote she wouldn’t like to see me or hear from me or receive any gifts from me or stay in contact with me any more for the rest of her life, I ignored it completely and made an annual visit to my parents as usual. She had sent me that offensive letter behind my father’s back and he doesn’t know about a broken relationship between me and my mother.

    My father also used to be bad-tempered and attack me when I returned home once a year or two. But since he sold our family’s house, he has welcomed me in a good mood at his small apartment in an unfamiliar town and hasn’t criticized me. He seems simply happy to see me each time I visit their apartment. And I know that is exactly what annoys my mother to the limit.

    To her, her new life is degradation. She was always unhappy when she lived in a big house with her husband to whom she married for his money. And now she has become even unhappier living in the small apartment without our family’s fortune. It’s easy to imagine how disgusted she is by my father’s upbeat attitude toward his new life. She must have sought revenge to make him equally unhappy and come up with that letter. She thought I would stop visiting them as she asked to. That would take away one of his pleasures and get him one step closer to unhappiness. She loves any kind of plot all her life but none of them is ever clever. This one is no exception that is too apparent for me to be fallen into. My decision to carry out a visit despite her letter implicated harassment to her because it would show her that her wicked plot failed yet again.

    A week before the trip, a big typhoon hit the western part of Japan where my parents live. Much damage resulted from it including to Kansai Airport on which my flight was going to arrive. As the airport is a man-made island in the sea, its runways and facilities were flooded by a storm surge. On top of that, a tanker crushed into the only bridge that connects the airport to the shore and broke it. The airport has been shut down.

    I hesitated about the trip. I couldn’t decide whether I should cancel my reservations for the flight and the hotel. Above all things, I wondered if this was a sign telling me not to visit my parents.

    But I had to go at all cost because it was my mother who had told me not to come. I’ve discovered and followed the unshaken rule since I was a teenager -do the opposite of what my mother says and I’ll be happy and everything will go well. This rule has worked 100 percent and has never failed in my life.

    Meanwhile, the airport partially reopened unexpectedly sooner than reported. Among most suspended flights, mine was one of the few that partially started re-operating. The damaged bridge to the shore returned passable by the limited lanes. I visited my parents as I had planned.

    I knew it would be so awkward to see my mother but I had determined not to get angry at her or blame her on her letter. If I did so, it would be her achievement. Her purpose is always to make me unhappy with any blow she could think of. I should behave unbreakable, which would be my blow against her.

    My mother met me at the entrance of their apartment as if nothing had happened between us. She desperately acted joyfully, uttering shallow flattery like I looked young or my outfit was pretty. Not only when my father was around, but also when there were only two of us, we never mentioned about the letter. She just kept on flattering and wearing fake smile. She even told me what she had never told before -tons of complains about her favorite, my younger sister. What surprised me more than that was the fact my mother had aged so suddenly. Her countenance had changed too. She had a face like a devil. With her aged shape and evil countenance, she looked exactly like a witch in “Snow White”. Looking at her sudden change, I realized that she regretted the letter. The moment she dropped the letter into the mail box, she became aware that she was old and helpless. Numerous unusual disasters that hit her region after the letter, such as crazy heat, a big earthquake and the typhoon, made her more insecure and anxious. She regretted that she had cut me off from her life because she threw away a thin rope by herself that she could have relied on in the future. It’s too late now.

    On the train back to the hotel, I felt good as everything went well on my side. At the same time, I felt an enormous relief and found how nervous I was during the visit. As it turned out, it was a showdown rather than a visit…

    Episode from

    Cats, Dogs and Kyoto, Japan by Hidemi Woods

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com