kill

I screamed with surprise and joy

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It’s the season for a year-end party in Japan. It’s called ‘Bonenkai’ which means ‘a party to forget this year’. Too negative. During the course of a year, there should be something good to remember, at least a couple. So, my partner and I adapted a new party with a different concept. My partner even created a new word for its name. We call it ‘Obonenkai’ which means ‘a party to remember this year’. We threw it today. I found other different aspects in our party than the name. People have a ‘Bonenkai’ party with many colleagues and friends, over an expensive meal. Ours is just two of us, over half-price prepared foods that are left unsold at a grocery store. It’s just like my style -or let’s say, ‘Hidemish’…

 

A coffee company sends me a newsletter once a week. They assigned a number to each member upon sign-up, and pick a winning number for the prize of two thousand dollars every week.

When I checked email today, I saw my number on the newsletter. I screamed with surprise and joy. My heart beat weirdly, sweat poured off. As I fixed my eyes, the newsletter showed my number as a reminder, not as a winning number. I didn’t win, of course. I buy a lottery ticket every week that you can win up to four million dollars. I learned today that I couldn’t survive if I won that kind of money, because two thousand dollars was enough to almost kill me…

Episode From Surviving in Japan by Hidemi Woods

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.

Podcast: When I killed her

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment
Episode from My School Days in Kyoto: A Japanese Girl Found Her Own Way  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 
 
My long-awaited first appearance on the stage drew unwelcome laughter in the school play but I had been absorbed in my role as an evil stepmother too much to care about the audience’s wrong response. A hush fell over them quickly and tension of the play was conveyed to them as the play went on. They even screamed in the scene that I slapped hard the heroine on the cheek. When I killed her near the end, I heard them raise an outcry. The play was a big success.
It was part of entertainment in a welcome assembly for new students. Since the school had both the junior high and the high school, the drama club had two performances on that day for each school. While I was cast in both performances, the heroine was double-cast. My favorite senior member of the club played it in the first performance and every scene with her went so well probably because chemistry between us was right. Especially when I slapped her, it produced an ideal loud whack. Miss Fujiwara, who had snatched a role away from me months before, was the heroine for the second performance. She asked me to slap her just as I did to another heroine. She was envious of the dramatic scene we had created. Unfortunately, she overacted the scene and my slapping made a dull thud. I knew it would go that way considering our bad chemistry. Or maybe my hand hit her too hard by carrying my bad feelings toward her.
After the play, the teacher in charge of the drama club ran up to me and proudly proclaimed, “A star is born!” He introduced me to his colleagues as a new star in the drama club. I gained a weird celebrity status at school. Every time students spotted me, they would shout abuse at me for what I had done in the play, or they would try to avoid me because they were scared of me. It seemed I acted the role so well that they believed I was a naturally vicious person off the stage.