futon

successor of the family

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The New Year’s holiday was the only time in a year that wives were allowed to spend the night at their parents’ home as a custom of my hometown. My mother used to stay overnight at her parents’ home once a year in New Year accordingly, along with my father, my younger sister and me.

　An earthquake occurred when I stayed at my grandparents’ house one New Year. When the earthquake happened, it was early in the morning and I was sleeping with my sister between my parents and my grandmother on the tatami floor. Although it wasn’t a big one, my grandmother jumped out of her futons and without hesitation, grabbed me to carry me down the hallway. She was dragging me with all her strength rather than carrying me because I was eleven years old and already quite big. Her reflex action seemed absurd to all of us since I could have run faster by myself.

　She said I was her responsibility and she couldn’t let anything happen to me. I was considered to be a successor of the family by then and she believed my family was decent. I realized how much pressure she had been under since she gave a daughter – my mother – in marriage to the family. Her reaction to the earthquake proved how important she thought I was. That is, important for her obligation to make me succeed the family…

Episode From An Old Tree in Kyoto /Hodemi 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

Podcast: if you don’t want to

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Episode from The Family in Kyoto: One Japanese Girl Got Freedom by Hidemi Woods 
 
Audiobook 1 : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. 
Audiobook 2 : My Social Distancing and Naked Spa in Japan by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. 
Apple Books, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks,  43 available distributors in total. 
 
if you don’t want to 
From kindergarten to the lower grades, I had suffered from insomnia. I hated going to kindergarten and then to school too strongly to sleep on school nights. As the morning to go there approached, I felt more and more nervous and tense. I would be wide awake in futon no matter how eager I was to fall asleep, watching glittering patterns on the back of my eyelids for hours. Tears ran through my cheeks into my ears during those long nights. When it dawned and the room was filled with the gray of the morning, I could finally doze awhile.
I slept beside my grandparents as my parents were occupied with my little sister in a different room. Before going to sleep, I would try to be near my mother as long as I could because she used to be the last one that retreated to her bedroom at night. But soon I was to be prodded into going to my grandparents’ room to sleep. I once found the courage to confide to my mother that I was having insomnia. She scoffed at it and said anyone could sleep by just closing his or her eyes. Her advice was to close my eyes. I wondered how dumb she thought I was, since I did so to sleep every night. She didn’t take it seriously and so I kept staying awake on weeknights secretly.
Sunday nights were the worst. The thought that a long week at school would start next morning made it undoubtedly impossible for me to sleep. My grandparents used to watch TV in futon before going to sleep. Their favorite drama was on Sunday nights and the end of the drama meant my grandmother fell asleep. I can still hear in my ears the sad tune of the drama’s ending. My grandfather would read a little after that. When the light by his pillow was turned off was a signal that he would also go to sleep and I would be left alone awake in futon.
One night, he noticed I wasn’t asleep in the middle of the night. “You’re still awake,” he was surprised. I confessed that I couldn’t sleep, and he simply said, “Don’t sleep, then.” While I couldn’t believe what I had just heard, he explained, “You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to.” I had never thought that way. I didn’t have to sleep! Like magic, his words cured my insomnia and I have fallen asleep easily ever since…

You’re not crying, are you? You’re just clearing your eyes, right?

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My father was an attentive father. He treated
me so nicely throughout my childhood. My
mother didn’t like how he treated me because
she believed he was just spoiling me. Every
time he did a nice thing to me, she got angry.
To avoid her anger, he had learned to give me
a treat without her presence.Near my home was a temple famous for the
five-storied pagoda, and a fair was held along
the approach to it once a month. A relative of
ours had a booth at the fair and my father
helped carry merchandise every month. He
never forgot to get some toys for me there
when his work was done. There was no greater
pleasure for me than seeing him entering the
house, waving some play house items to me.
Of course he was scolded by my mother when
she caught it.
I usually slept beside my grandparents and I
had suffered from chronic insomnia in my
childhood. Once in a while, I had a happy
occasion to sleep with my parents when my
grandparents were on their trip. On one of
those occasions, my mother was taking a bath
when my father came to futon next to me.
Since my parents didn’t know about my
insomnia, he was surprised I was still awake.
He thought I couldn’t sleep because I was too
hungry. Not to be caught by my mother, he
stealthily got out of the room, sneaked into the
kitchen, made a rice ball and brought it to me.
He told me to finish it before my mother came
out of the bathroom. Seeing me devouring it,
he said that he had never made a rice ball by
himself before and didn’t know how. It was
surely the ugliest rice ball, but the most
delicious one I had ever had.
My mother also didn’t like to see me cry. She
had told me not to cry because crying made me look like an idiot.

While my little sister cried
all the time, I tried not to as hard as I could.
But as a small child, I sometimes couldn’t help
it and my mother would get angry with me for
crying. In those cases, my father always said
to me, “You’re not crying, are you? You’re just
clearing your eyes, right?” I hadn’t noticed
until recently that there are the exact words in
my song ‘Sunrise’. I’ve put his words
unconsciously…

Free download of Kindle ebook! Mar18th-22nd, ”The Japanese Girl and Last Homecoming in Kyoto / Hidemi Woods”

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The Japanese Girl and Last Homecoming in Kyoto /Hidemi Woods

The cab was running through my familiar neighborhood where I spent my entire childhood. It was still shabby as it used to be. The cab drove through old houses of my childhood friends where I used to play with them, and under the overhead train bridge where I ran into perverts so many times. From the car window, I saw the elementary school I went to, and the sidewalk on which my first song came to me while I was walking. The bookstore where my father bought me my first English dictionary and also where he spotted his missing cousin. A place where a milk factory used to be that I waved to its plastic cows beside the gate every time I passed by in my father’s car. The old temple where my late grandparents used to take me and let me feed doves.
Then something struck me and I suddenly realized. It wasn’t just the house I was losing. I was losing my hometown and departing from my childhood. I would never be in this neighborhood again because it was going to be an unrelated, foreign place from now on. Although I had always hated my neighborhood, that thought brought a lump to my throat and soon I found myself crying. I was stunned and overwhelmed by this unexpected feeling. If I hadn’t been inside a cab, I would have wailed.
The cab came near Kyoto Station that was my destination. My late grandfather often took me to this area around the station that used to be undeveloped, decayed and in the miserable condition. But now, after years of intense redevelopment, it has become an urban area with numerous modern buildings of hotels, fashionable shops and huge shopping malls. It was a completely new different place and I found no trace of what I was familiar with the area. The cab stopped at the signal close to the station and there stood a new movie complex by the street. I casually wondered if it showed ‘Tomorrowland’. Then I felt I was actually stepping into it.
Things and places I had been with were all disappearing and a place I had never seen before appeared in front of me. I saw a change more clearly than ever. I was leaving everything old behind and going into a new world. The world I’m walking into is unknown, but therefore there are full of possibilities…

Free download of Kindle ebook! Mar18th-22nd, ”The Japanese Girl and Last Homecoming in Kyoto / Hidemi Woods”