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The Happiest Place in Tokyo hr664

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment

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. 

When You Wish Upon A Star hr660

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment

About a month ago, out of the blue, an offer for an online guest appearance came to me from a Podcast talk show. Since appearing on any talk show in the world remotely is possible thanks to the Internet while I reside in Japan, I took the offer rather casually. However, the more I got to know about the show, the more dismal my decision looked.

The show broadcasts from New York not only on Podcast but also on YouTube which means people see me not just listen to me. The content is an hour-long, one-on-one interview with the host. Learning those, I was gradually getting into trouble. I am an expert of stage fright and get extremely nervous in front of people. I do have my own Podcast show, but only on the premise that no one could see me behind the microphone. I have a complex about my looks and I couldn’t imagine how nervous I would be if I appeared on the screen. I would get hyper-tense and my broken English would get even worse. I would become speechless in the middle of the show or maybe would pass out. The show would be a mess and ruined because of me. It would certainly end in disaster.

My first appearance as a guest on a local radio show happened when I was twenty years old. Although only my voice was on the air, I was so nervous that I actually soiled myself, which I summon all the courage to confess here for the first time. As more shame of mine, I usually get soaked with sweat whenever some neighbors happen to talk to me. My sweat keeps dripping down just for trifling chattering and even my native language Japanese got broken because I am keyed up too much. I am excessively self-conscious and afraid of how I look and how I sound at all times. I didn’t think such a person like me was able to speak properly in front of the camera. For the whole one month after the online interview was scheduled, I had been fretting and worried about the show. The worst case scenario had come over my mind so many times and convinced me that I should cancel it each time. On the other hand though, I knew it could be a one-in-a-million opportunity for me. As a nameless artist, receiving an offer for a guest appearance might never happen again in my life. It was too valuable to throw away since this could easily be the last chance I got. I decided to go through it after days of consideration and wavering. As the date was closing in, I had relived my life in elementary school where a vaccination was mandatory on a regular basis. Because I was terrified of needles, I didn’t want the scheduled day to come. As it came closer, I counted down the remaining time and hoped that day would pass in a flash or I would do a time warp to the next day of the injection. I even thought it would be better that the world ended before the shot. I had felt the same way until the interview finally arrived.

The interview started at 2 a.m. Japan time because of the time difference. I am a night person, but my brain has almost engaged in a sleep mode at 2 o’clock in the morning. Adding to that, a rash broke out due to lingering nerves. On top of that, I lost some weight and my stomach constantly growled because I had had a decrease in appetite since the interview was scheduled. I knew the microphone would pick up my stomach’s growling during the recording. The condition had never been worse. By the time the recording actually began, just to wrap up was all I wanted. 

In the end, I was elated enough to be conceited and talk large thanks to the excellent, compassionate host while it was so miserable that it was painful to watch or listen. As it turned out, I somehow felt good to talk about what I was thinking although my ever messy speaking conveyed merely half of what I really wanted to say. Above all, it was all done, and I didn’t soil myself this time.

I had always dreamed of getting on a talk show as a guest. Every time I watched a talk show on TV, I had secretly wished to be there someday since I was little. I used to imagine myself being asked questions and answering them on the screen. I would wonder what kind of feeling it would be seeing someone have interest in me. After so many years, I was unexpectedly blessed with an opportunity like this, which was quite magical considering the fact that I became neither famous nor rich. And I realized that my dream came true.