life

new apartment

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Since I moved in my new apartment, I’ve occasionally felt a sense of homesick. Only I’ve seldom felt it for my old apartment. What I miss are shops and restaurants that I often visited, characters and mascots that were standing by the roadside or painted on signboards, and the memories associated with them. In my case, homesick isn’t for home to be exact.

I’ve moved for six times in all both domestically and internationally in my life, and the first one was when I left home where I was born and raised, and started to live on my own for the first time in Tokyo. Although it seemed like a perfect occasion to feel homesick, I was too happy to feel any. To date, I’ve never missed my hometown nor wanted to visit the house.

Recently, I’ve seen many people on TV who live in the shelters after the earthquake eager to return their hometowns instead of moving to new places. For most people, home is such an important place. I wonder if my new place here can become my home…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

goodbye to the empty apartment

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The moving day had finally arrived. I got up only with a three-hour sleep. There was little time before moving out. Although a mover would come a few hours later, unpacked things were still littered all over the floor. My hands were trembling with a panic. Just as I managed to pack everything, the moving van pulled up.

The problem was a huge amount of trash. We must use the municipal specified bags to throw away trash, but I used them up and had no time to go and buy more. I ended up shipping trash to my new place. While the mover was loading up a truck with my furniture, boxes and the trash, the real estate agent came up to check the apartment.

He was examining the place closely to see if there was any damage. As a matter of fact, I had been dreading this moment for months. I was afraid that he was going to charge me an outrageous price for repairs. Since I didn’t have enough time to clean up the place, a possible cover-up wouldn’t work. When I was braced for a high price, he said that the room cleaning was included in the security deposit I had put down and I would receive the most of it back. I didn’t have to clean the place in the first place or pay for the damage. On the contrary, I got money back.

After both the agent and the mover left, I said goodbye to the empty apartment I had lived for nine years, locked the door for the last time, and headed for the bus stop. I would never been in this neighborhood again. An end leads to another beginning…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

The Happiest Place in Tokyo hr664

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It was 1983 when the theme park which host is the mouse opened in Japan for the first time outside the U.S. Two years after it opened, I left my hometown and began to live by myself in Tokyo to pursue my career as a musician. My partner was the one that I had a meeting with to join my first band and I had worked with ever since. He also moved to Tokyo and settled in an extremely shabby small 50-year-old wooden apartment. We were going to find  band members in Tokyo together and to start our new band. However, things didn’t go as smoothly as we had planned and we had fretted ourselves. For a change of a glum mood, we decided to visit the theme park for the first time.

In those days, the concept of a theme park hadn’t been pervasive in Japan and amusement parks were just big fairs with common rides for kids. I had no idea what a theme park meant either when I first visited there. Although I hadn’t even dreamed of that, the visit came to have changed my life significantly.

As I stepped in the park without any particular knowledge nor expectation, I was instantly shocked. What spread in front of my eyes was a world that was totally different from the Japanese one outside. All the buildings were pretty and cool as if they had been popped out of picture books or foreign movies. One of the areas duplicated a street of an American remote town which looked so attractive. Other than numerous authentic quality attractions, amazingly professional shows were played everywhere with great dancing and singing from the cast. The true entertainment was there. Also, not a single piece of litter was spotted on the ground. The moment someone dropped one popcorn, a cleaning worker appeared from somewhere and swept it in a flash. Each and every worker was kind and smiling. Even when a small child vomited, they didn’t make a wry face but cleaned with considerate treatment. The park’s number of visitors were not big because it had been only two years since the theme park opened and it hadn’t gotten so popular yet. That made it perfect with no crowd and I imagined that the intended concept of the person who came up with this park’s idea almost truly got materialized. Furthermore, Japanese signature courtesy and earnestness was added to that. The staff were standing straight in front of the attractions without slacking, waving at the passing guests with a smile and a bow. At the restaurant, they served with excellent attitude and speed though there was no custom for a tip. It seemed this was the very place that the world should be and a utopia that wasn’t believed to exist in the real world.

There was one more huge aspect that captured my heart. Since I was a child, I have had difficulty with being with people. Because I didn’t have a friend when I was little, talking to stuffed animals was my habit to relieve loneliness. To my surprise, in this park, man-sized stuffed animals appeared one after another all around and lived there as the residents, waving at the guests or looking at merchandise at the shop or teasing the staff. From up on the stage of the revue, they were singing toward the guests that dreams would come true. The world I had dreamed of did exist there and I became a captive to this magical park.

The day filled with emotion and excitement came to an end and the park’s closing time arrived. I didn’t want to leave. I strongly wished I could stay in this place. With tears in my eyes, I went through the park’s gate into the city of Tokyo where I now got to live and grungy anxiety and frustration engulfed me every day. I took the bus from the park remembering what my mother once told me when I couldn’t sleep. She said that if I waited patiently in my futon, a bus would eventually come to pick me up and take me to the dream world of stuffed animals. I finally understood she had unknowingly meant this bus and this park. Tokyo used to be the dream place for me who was born and raised in a rural part of Japan. But when I got there, Tokyo turned into mere somber reality. Now that I saw an earthly paradise like this theme park, I began to fancy myself living there or in some place that at least looked alike.

Ten years later, I was living in California, speaking English instead of Japanese. I hadn’t even dreamed of that kind of my future on that day when I first visited the theme park. 

the day before the move

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It was the day before the move. Time for packing everything including basic necessities. I unscrewed the table legs and removed the drapes and the venetian blind from the windows. After packing the stereo, inside the apartment was weirdly quiet and I heard my own voice reverberate.

When I had the last dinner at this apartment with my partner on a small folding table and remembered many good things that had happened or come in here, tears suddenly rolled down my face and I couldn’t stop crying owing to the beer and a spell of lack of sleep. But I knew I couldn’t afford to be sentimental. I had to evacuate this apartment by noon the next day. It seemed undoubtedly impossible to finish packing and cleaning the place by then. A hectic, sleepless night awaited me…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

move out here

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I have only three days to go before I move to my new apartment. I’m already exhausted from packing. Once furniture is moved, the dirty wall or mold appears and the thorough cleaning is also necessary.

A mover came today to pick up some pieces of my furniture. To me, they looked like supermen. They carried heavy objects down the stairs so easily. One of them had been even determined to carry down my electric piano by himself until I begged him to do it with his co-worker. Compared to them, I’m nothing. Moving just a few things tires me out and makes my muscles stiff. I don’t know how unstably I’m moving, but I have bruises all over. After I settle in my new place, I’ll exercise and strengthen my body – that is, when I finish all the packing and cleaning and move out here in time for the deadline…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

Radiation has been leaked

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About two months have passed since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake in Japan. Finally, aftershocks have dwindled. Those atrocious scheduled blackouts have stopped being carried out so far. Food shortages were resolved.

Nevertheless, life is totally different from the one before the earthquake. Radiation has been leaked from the crippled nuclear power plants everyday and I can’t go outside as much as I like. At nighttime, stores and restaurants hold their signboard lights off and the streets have become dim. I don’t understand why they turn the lights off since the electricity consumption is low at night and electricity can’t be stored up for later use. As there’s no rational reason for that, I suspect they’re just promoting their gestures of trying to save on electricity. Their baseless savings of electricity make the whole town stale and depressed.

In Japan, people have consecutive holidays from the end of April to the first week of May, which is usually the lively, noisy and annoying time of year for me. But this year, the holidays were gone quietly. When I decided to move to the countryside, my biggest concern was if I adapt to living in a small town with sparse shops. But after the earthquake, ironically, the city I currently live in is as dark as the small town I’m moving to, and because my going out is limited due to radiation, the shopping experience here is nothing less than in a small town…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

how neat it looked without things

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Now that I have already submitted a month’s notice to move out this apartment in mid-May, it’s less than a month for me to leave.

Through my vigorous packing after the earthquake, my apartment is quite empty. I realized how spacious it was and how neat it looked without things. On the other hand, ironically, the destination of my things, which is my new apartment, has had less space and looked more and more like a storage room with numerous cardboard boxes towering to the ceiling.

I’ve often heard on TV that there is a strong possibility this 9.0-magnitude earthquake will trigger an earthquake which epicenter is the metropolitan area. That plausible story combined with daily fears of aftershocks and radiation makes my resolution to move out of the Tokyo area firm no matter how attractive my current apartment has become once again. While I want to move to my new place as soon as possible, thinking about those towering boxes there, I have no idea how many months it will take to unpack all of them. The completion of the moving won’t come so easily…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

easing my stress

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The region where my new apartment is located is famous for hot springs and my apartment building has its spa for the residents. For this trip there, I had looked forward to easing my stress from the earthquake’s aftermath in a hot spa by feeling relaxed and rich.

But when I went there, I found out that the operating hours were cut short due to shortages of electricity and oil because the nuclear power plants and some of the thermal power stations for this region had been damaged too and remained to stop after the earthquake. Also, to save on electricity, most lights in the spa were off and the Jacuzzi and the sauna were closed. All I could enjoy was to sit in the hot tub in a weirdly dark, silent spa. That easily made me downhearted. To make things even worse, a mother with a shrieking child came in and destroyed the remnants of peace. There is no way to avoid the aftermath, and a noisy kid, in Japan…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

To escape from those stressful days

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Aftershocks persist day and night although it is more than a month since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit Japan. I often wake up in the middle of the night by a jolt and brace myself for a possible big one. As a result, I get up every morning tired. To escape from those stressful days and also to move my furniture and boxes, I took a trip to my new place for a couple of days.

About 70 percent of the moving was completed by this trip. The goal is near.　    The region of my new apartment was still covered with snow and looked like a different world. I was able to be absorbed in cleaning the apartment without thinking about aftershocks, radiation and a shortage of food for a while. It was when I began to feel unwilling to go back to the Tokyo area that I jumped out of bed at night with a big jolt. I turned on my new TV which I had just set up that evening and found out the seismic center was right under the area of my new apartment. There is no way to avoid an earthquake in Japan…

Episode From Surviving in Japan / Hidemi Woods

Audiobook : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total

Living by Myself in Tokyo hr663

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When I left my hometown for Tokyo and started living by myself there in the mid 80’s, quite a few second-run theaters for movies still remained. Those theaters showed two or three films at the price of one new film. The best experience of mine was when I saw ‘Top Gun’, ‘Taps’ and ‘Back to the Future’ as an all-night triple feature program at a second-run theater in a suburb of Tokyo. Those films were already a bit old by then and the show time was the middle of the night, so that the price was incredibly low accordingly. I left my apartment at night, ate out for dinner, got hamburgers to have inside the theater and was immersed into the movie world until dawn. The main attraction for me had been ‘Top Gun’ that turned out to be so-so. Instead, I was deeply moved by ‘Back to the Future’ although I had thought it would be a silly 50’s comedy judging from its trailer. The film became my best one and had held that position for many years to come.

Back then, I had just moved to Tokyo to become a musician in spite of all the opposition from my family and friends. I had been feeling unsettled constantly because of anxiety and loneliness, which stemmed from uncertainty of my future. I had been clueless about whether I would be successful as a musician and how my life would unfold itself. I saw ‘Back to the Future’ in that state of mind and the story and the ending of the film encouraged me immensely.

When I lived in my hometown with my family, many rules bound me. To begin with, that all-night movie experience was a dream within a dream since my curfew was as early as 9 p.m. Other rules were abundant. Singing while eating was forbidden, a gap between the body and the edge of the table must not exist during the meal, whistling or playing the piano after dark was prohibited, some ways of talking to my grandparents were banned, walking with audible steps inside the house wasn’t allowed, chewing something in the mouth in public was regarded as an act of barbarity, and so on and on. But once I began to live by myself, I was freed from all the family rules and everything was left to my discretion. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. I woke up when I felt like it, since I didn’t work at an office. I slept until evening at times, and rarely cleaned or did the dishes. The bathroom got moldy. While I appreciated freedom, I realized how slack I really was. My music career didn’t go well either. I had expected I could find my band members easily as Tokyo was the biggest city in Japan where so many aspiring musician gathered from all parts of Japan. The reality was Tokyo simply had too many bad unmotivated musicians. It was extremely hard to find a member whom I desired and my band just kept breaking up. That was far from what I had planned as life in Tokyo. I sometimes got tempted to doubt if my decision to come here was the right one even though I hadn’t had any other choice.

When I finished to see the movies all night and left the theater, it was early morning in the real world. I headed back for my apartment. The train had started running and many commuters were walking hurriedly and gloomily toward the station already. They used the train bound for downtown that was an opposite direction to where I was going. I was waiting on the empty platform for my train while watching them waiting on the nearly overflowing platform. When their train came, they pushed and crammed themselves into the cars. The station workers additionally pushed their backs from outside to squeeze as many passengers as possible in and the train doors barely closed. Minutes after it departed, the platform got filled with commuters quickly again. I stepped in the empty opposite train and yawned in the seat, remembering ‘Back to the Future’. When I decided to live by myself in Tokyo that was a far and unknown big city, I was afraid and trembled for what my life was going to be like. I gave up my right to an inheritance by leaving my family, and a possible steady income by quitting college. I was alone by parting from my family and my friends who disagreed and didn’t support me mentally. I threw away everything which wasn’t easy for me. But as Marty’s father dared, I had dared in my own way and left for Tokyo. I hoped that action of mine changed my future. In a good way, I wished.