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Audiobooks and ebooks by Hidemi Woods
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My Super Power
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…
Episode from
The Japanese Girl’s Days by Hidemi Woods
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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
by Hidemi Woods
Kindle and Audiobook available ,Click to Buy at Amazon.com
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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
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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
