I bring slippers

The building of my new apartment has a spa for the residents. As a common practice in Japan, we must take off our shoes to get in the spa’s locker room. I hate taking off my shoes at a public place, but I go there every day to take a bath and a shower because the service charge that I pay every month includes the spa fee.

Of course, I can’t walk barefoot around the floor that other people step on with their socks or bare feet since I have germ-phobia, so I have my own solution. I bring slippers and wear them when I take off my shoes to enter the locker room. This way, my feet never touch the public floor.

One day, a middle-aged woman approached me and told me to take off my slippers and stay barefoot inside the locker room. Listening to her reason for a weird demand, I realized that she thought I had used the slippers as my shoes and therefore I had entered with my shoes on. I explained to her that I did take off my shoes and wore the slippers instead of being barefoot, which was as clean as barefooted. Actually, wearing slippers is cleaner than barefooted, for that matter. But she still insisted that I should be barefoot. While I had no idea why she wanted me to take off my slippers so badly and I kept telling her how clean my slippers were, she finally made her hidden point clear. She said, Because nobody is wearing slippers here!Her point wasn’t about hygiene. She didn’t like to see someone different.

Like a typical Japanese, she wants everyone to live in the same way and feels secure by that. She’s the exact opposite to me. I feel secure when I’m different. I’m confident other residents will follow and apply my way in time, and after a few years, everyone including that woman will wear slippers in the locker room. I walked there with my slippers on as usual, a little proudly today…

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

take off your shoes

When getting into a Japanese house, you must take off your shoes. It’s more than a natural rule to Japanese people and if anyone entered with their shoes on, it would mean not only uncleanness but also an insult.

When an English tourist once visited my apartment and started to get in without taking off her shoes, my Japanese friends there all at once shouted to warn. While it was just an ‘oops’ thing to her, it was a shockingly offensive gesture to them.

Even some restaurants and bars in Japan make customers take off their shoes. For some reason, the area I have just moved in has many places with that rule. I loathe taking off my shoes at a restaurant.

When I was a child, half of my house was in Western style, where we came in the hall, walked around the hallway and had meals at the dining room all with our shoes on. Although I was not so much used to eating with my shoes off, now it’s perfectly all right at home because I’ve developed sort of germ-phobia. But, sharing the floor with other people is a completely different matter. I can’t possibly step on the floor where people touched with their dirty socks or bare feet. Whenever I open the door of a restaurant and see the floor for shoes to be taken off, I leave the place right away and try somewhere else. Consequently, there are too many restaurants in this area that I can’t enter…

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 indigenous god

An explosive sound woke me up at 6 a.m. I thought a war broke out nearby. But it turned out to be firecrackers. It was the day that locals of this area celebrated a festival every seven years to bless their indigenous god, who preserved the area. My hometown, which is far away from here, has a similar god and festival but they never use firecrackers. For some crazy reason, locals here cracked them every hour on the hour all day long, and I jumped at the loud noise each time. I believe the indigenous god also jumped for disturbance rather than for joy…

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

A girl again! : Talking and Reading from Japan by Hidemi Woods

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

name : Talking and Reading from Japan by Hidemi Woods

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

an old Japanese custom and Sunrise

 
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. 
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Podcast: Tokyo and conveyor belt sushi restaurant

Episode from Hidemi’s Rambling  by 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 
 
Moving to a new place reminds me about the time when I first left  home. I had always longed to live in Tokyo since childhood, watching  modern high-rises or cool apartments in TV dramas. I knew that would  never happen to me because I was a firstborn in a family succeeded from  generation to generation and was destined to finish my life in the  country family house. But music provoked me to throw away everything-my  family, friends, college life and, above all, secure life-and to move to  Tokyo. As almost all Japanese record companies were in Tokyo and there  were many musicians as well, I thought it would be easy to promote my  music and find good band members. In actual fact, I only found bad  musicians in an unsightly city with too many people, and the record  companies picked trashy songs by ignoring mine. Except that I was so  happy to have left the place where I was born, things in Tokyo weren’t  as good as I had expected…

My new Kindle has been published! “Leaving Kyoto: I felt as if I had officially become an author / Hidemi Woods”

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…

Leaving Kyoto: I felt as if I had officially become an author / Hidemi Woods

successor of the family

Photo by Satoshi Hirayama on Pexels.com

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