Hidemi Woods

Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.

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  • a train ride in Japan

    a train ride in Japan

    My main means of transportation is the train. As manners and common sense vary in countries, I introduce here what a train ride in Japan is like. In the Tokyo metropolitan area, it’s just atrocious especially during the rush hours. I had had a lot of trouble when I lived in the area. It’s almost impossible to get a ride since both the train and the platform are packed with people. The train is full, which means in Japan’s case that you can’t move as you’re pressed firmly against other passengers’ bodies around you. Because I’m short and feel claustrophobia only in a few minutes, I have to pass several trains to wait for a less crowded one. That results in a long, inefficient travel although the trains run every ten minutes or less.

    As the night deepens, the smell of alcohol fills the train car that has more drunken businessmen, some of whom are befuddled. It used to be common that men openly spread and read porn magazines and tabloids in the car, but thankfully they are replaced by smartphones now. There are women-only cars that men aren’t allowed to get in during the rush hours. Too many cases of being groped or molested in a crowded train car made railroad companies invent this crazy sexism solution. I myself can’t count how many times I was touched or saw a man expose himself in the train.

    When I once squeezed myself into a packed car on my way to school, I barely got my body inside the car but my bag couldn’t. The door closed on the handles of my bag and left the bag outside. I rode for three minutes with my bag dangling outside the train, swinging violently.

    In daytime, the murderous congestion subsides. Instead, enters a group of housewives with large strollers that block aisles. They ignore their children who are crying and shrieking. Some passengers eat snacks, rice balls or sandwiches in the train. Some eat cup noodles or lunch in a box called bento. Even drinking alcoholic beverages is okay. But, people dart an angry look at someone who is putting on makeup. One of major complains to railroad companies is making up in the train. I don’t have the slightest idea what that means. It’s acceptable no matter how drunken or how loud you are inside the train, but not that you’re putting up makeup. I heard on the radio show that an elderly woman complained about a young lady who was putting on mascara in the train. Her point was she couldn’t allow a woman to turn up the whites of her eyes in public. It doesn’t make sense and to me, it sounds clear sexism. I almost always put on makeup on the train for time efficiency and wage a quiet battle against other passengers’ angry glances.

    With good or bad manners aside, trains in Japan are generally safe and a murder or a robbery hardly happens. A pickpocket steals a wallet from a drunken passenger who has fallen asleep, or a drunk beats a conductor, that’s the maximum. If you have carelessly left your belongings in the train, they’re found and delivered to a station in most cases. It may be too extravagant to complain of Japan’s trains that are well maintained, so clean, and graffiti-free.

    While it’s sometimes uncomfortable to share a ride with people whose likes and dislikes are pretty different from mine, it’d be better to relish the difference and be surprised by it. That may help me grow leniency. Besides, there’s no such thing as the world going round solely by my own rules after all…

    Episode from Hidemi Woods

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  • A Woman with An Iron Heart!

    A Woman with An Iron Heart!

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    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 [Click to Buy at Amazon.com]

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

  • wristwatch

    wristwatch

    For some reason, I like a wristwatch so much. I have a collection of inexpensive wristwatches. So far, I’ve got 25 of them, almost all of which cost under $15. As a cheap collector, the biggest drawback is a battery. Having the battery replaced at a clock shop costs about $10, which is sometimes more than the price of my wristwatch itself. To solve this problem, I started changing the battery by myself several years ago by getting some basic tools for that. A battery for a watch is available on the Internet only at around 40 cents and replacing it by myself makes a big difference.

    While I’ve replaced a watch battery regularly, I found it really enjoyable. It seems I also like tinkering about with a watch. There are various tools for a watch on the Internet such as ones to open and close a lid, ones to change a watch band, ones to adjust a length of a metal band and so on, and everything attracts me.

    Since my songs don’t sell, I even thought of early retirement and visualized myself opening my own clock shop. How nice it would be tinkering with watches all day, surrounded by many new watches. Better yet, how about a clock shop with a cafe in it? Customers would have coffee looking at a line of watches of my pick. But the watches would keep reminding the customer what time it is and the restless ticking of their second hands would make them rush. Besides, I’m a dropper and I would drop the watch to the floor all the time. New watches would be broken and the customer’s one would be compensated. In addition, I have a germ phobia and couldn’t stand touching someone’s belongings, which would make it impossible to replace a battery in a customer’s watch.

    Above all, people usually retire from a shopkeeper and then start music. My course would be the reverse of a common situation. Incidentally, I’m a little astigmatic and no good with tiny parts. I’d better restrict myself to a battery change of my own wristwatches.

    Before I began to replace a wristwatch battery by myself, I used to visit a small mom-and-pop clock shop. It was diffidently situated in a nook of a supermarket. Although the supermarket had fairly many shoppers around, they just walked past the clock shop and seldom got in. The shop looked near deserted and I often saw an old couple who kept the shop nodding off over the counter.

    The old man was a typical bull-headed craftsman. He never pitched or chatted friendly to the customer, but worked on a watch intensely and precisely. All his tools looked as old as he himself was, having used for who knew how many years. Every watch of mine I brought there was a cheap one, and yet he treated them as if they were high-end watches. One of my wristwatches has a peculiar-shaped lid and when I brought it in for a battery change, he closed the lid with his own hands by taking ten minutes since his tool was too old to deal with the shape. When I brought in an apparently broken wristwatch, he poured a mysterious liquid inside the watch and dried it with the ceiling light by standing on the chair to reach up the light for ten minutes. The watch started ticking again magically and has been in top shape since then.

    I had never left the counter during his work because I liked to look at it so much. Everything he was doing to a watch attracted me immensely. I would even gaze at a simple battery change with fascination. He would use a wearable loupe, clean the lid with a tiny brush, open it, take out an old battery with tweezers, bring a new one from behind the curtain, engrave the date on the battery so that he could evaluate its duration on the next change, put it in, close the lid with his old tool and set the time with his wristwatch. Sometimes he found a tattered water-repellent rubber ring inside my watch but he never pressed me into buying a new one. He just picked up torn pieces with his tweezers and put them back in as they had been.

    His most strict instruction to keep watches was to separate them from appliances at least ten feet. It’s difficult in my small apartment but I still keep my watches as far from appliances as possible. He also told me repeatedly not to place a watch close to a cell phone. I’ve changed my wrist to wear a watch to my right, as I use a cell phone with my left hand. Eventually I moved too far away from the shop and couldn’t visit any more. And I started replacing a battery by myself. I mimic his battery change with much more primitive tools. Probably I liked to see his work because of his passion and earnestness for a watch. I wonder how he’s doing and miss him…

    Episode from Hidemi Woods

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  • don’t articulate yes or no

    don’t articulate yes or no

    Japan is a country of ambiguity. There are gray areas everywhere. Take a mobile coupon sent to a cell phone for instance. On a coupon screen, it says ‘Valid for all stores in the mall’. But right next to it, there’s a name of a specific store, along with a description ‘Show this screen to this store’. I can’t tell whether the coupon is acceptable for all stores or only for the specific store.

    Ambiguity is also seen in people. Japanese people don’t articulate yes or no. Especially they don’t like to say no. I brought the mobile coupon to a cafe in the mall, which wasn’t the specific store mentioned on it. I asked the salesperson if it was acceptable here or not. She carefully read the screen of my cell phone and said, “Well, let’s see…” three times. All I needed was yes or no, but she started describing the specific store shown on the coupon. I asked my simple question “Can I use this here?” again. She answered with her “Well, let’s see…” twice, and then began to explain the characteristics and the specialties of the named store. To help with her answer, I said, “So, I can’t use this here though it also says ‘Valid for all stores’.” Instead of a simple no, she began to tell me the named store’s location in the mall. I tried my “Can I use this here?” again. She read the coupon screen out loud again and just repeated “Well, let’s see…” several times. Then she started, “If the specific store on the screen were the name of our cafe, you could use this.” Now, we were getting somewhere. I said, “So, this isn’t acceptable here,” feeling sure to hear a no from her at last. Yet, she repeated “Well, let’s see…” and began to describe the named store again. I got back where I started just for a no.

    I don’t understand why saying no is so difficult. I always say yes or no clearly because I hate ambiguity. It must seem strange to them. Maybe that explains why I don’t have a friend here…

    Episode from Hidemi Woods

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  • The Return to Anaheim

    The Return to Anaheim

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

    I got on the plane to Los Angeles and was taking breath in my seat when a flight attendant spilled orange juice all over my partner’s brand-new pants. They were his favorite pants that he would wear all the way to the end of this trip. His face looked both crying and laughing.
    The plane approached Los Angeles and the familiar sight of brownish, scorched-looking land came into my view. Good and bad memories flooded into my mind. Right before the touchdown, I saw the signature structure of two arches and the control tower of LAX.
    Totally unexpectedly and suddenly, a surprising feeling seized me. I felt I was home. I felt as if I had returned from a long trip of ten years to my hometown that I had given up coming back again. It was a warm feeling that I had never had before. My eyes were filled with tears. I had never understood those who talked about how wonderful homecoming was. I didn’t know what they were talking about though I was born in Kyoto and have lived away from it. I have never felt anything special every time I go back to Kyoto. I just feel indifferent or rather disgusting. Coming back to Los Angeles, I understood what homecoming is all about for the first time in my life. If I had been traveling alone, I would have cried out loud. I was stunned at the discovery of my hometown. The plane landed and a tear of joy was on my face as I finally came home…

    Episode from

    The Return to Anaheim: Travel, Trouble and Still Alive by Hidemi Woods [Click to Buy at Amazon.com]

    Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com