love

not to come home ever again

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My mother and I don’t have much contact with each other. But after Japan’s earthquake, I’ve heard from my mother sometimes, which is quite unusual. A couple of months ago, she sent me a postcard that said she was worried about me for frequent aftershocks. The other day, her thank-you card for my Mother’s Day gift was forwarded to my new place although she had completely ignored my gift the year before.

She doesn’t know my new address because I haven’t told her that I moved. Every single action I take makes her resent for some reason, and I conceal things around myself from her as much as possible. On that forwarded postcard, she wrote that she’s been worried about me this time for radiation from the crippled nuclear power plant. Each time, I noticed her firm intention not to use a specific sentence. It’s ‘Why don’t you come home to stay with us for a while?’ When people leave the Tokyo metropolitan area for the safer western part of Japan, where she lives, it’s so unnatural that she hasn’t suggested it.

Of course, as a mother who has told me not to come home ever again, I understand that is the last suggestion she would make for me. I can even read between the lines, that she is overflowing with joy, because she believes I’ve suffered the earthquake’s aftermath as a punishment I’ve opposed everything she told me to do. Possibly, I’m twisted to think this way and she may be really worried about me.

But ever since I left home, I’ve lived easily and cheerfully and that has been intolerant to her. The fact I’ve already left and moved for a safe area would infuriate her if she knew. It’s human nature to gloat over someone’s misfortune and begrudge someone’s happiness, I guess…

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

postcard from my mother

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I received an unusually nice postcard from my mother, which said she was worried about me because aftershocks of the Japan’s earthquake had still continued to come almost every day in this area. She had also called me right after the earthquake and when the phone service was restored, she asked me if I was all right.

Both gestures of hers were so unlike her usual attitudes toward me. When she called, she asked me what my apartment was like and where it was located, too. I’ve lived here for nine years and have told her about my apartment many times over the years. I don’t know if she’s not listening to what I’m saying or she simply doesn’t care about me, but either way, she doesn’t remember things around me at all.

Considering that many people in Japan have felt helpless and faint-hearted since the earthquake, her true concern might be just for her future as an old woman, not for me. I found a wrap with a markdown of 75% that had left unsold for winter and bought it as a Mother’s Day gift to send to my mother. When it arrives, I’m sure she will glance at it, tuck it away in her drawers, and forget about it quickly. I know this much because a few years before, she has told me not to come home again, and yet, she has acted as if nothing had happened between us…

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

I’m not the only one who isn’t loved

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Last night, I had a dream about being disliked.

I got on the bus with my mother and there were a few dogs aboard. She told me to pick one dog as a favorite and I pointed at one dog. He looked at me startled, wrenched open the window and ran away by jumping out of the bus. Then, my mother detailed what she hated about me one by one, and it went forever.

When I looked outside, a teenage boy was slapped and scolded by his father who shouted “You’re no use! You’re a disgrace!“ I was thinking, “I’m not the only one who isn’t loved. He is having a worse day than I am. Maybe my life is better than his. I’ll put this on my blog today anyway.“ And, I woke up…

Audiobook: The Family in Kyoto: One Japanese Girl Got Freedom by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. 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, Google Play, Audible,   43 available distributors in total.

Valentine’s Day in Japan

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Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

In Japan, Valentine’s Day is the day for a woman to confide to have feelings for a man by giving a gift of chocolate. In a male-dominant country like Japan, it used to be the only day that a woman is allowed to do it. Things are changing fast and women confide their feelings to men any day now. Maybe this loathsome male-dominant society has been collapsing gradually. But apart from a man they love, women give chocolate to their male colleagues and bosses out of obligation. So, the male domination still prevails after all. I’m thankful that I’ve never worked in an office…

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: POW

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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. 
 
POW 
Once, on the festival for the local shrine of my hometown, my favorite grandfather on my mother’s side and I were talking alone at the front yard of my house. He knew a lot about plants and taught me the names of trees in the yard. There was a rooftop space above the garage and it was surrounded by a fence. We went up the rooftop and my grandfather began to climb the fence.
I tried to stop him but he said he could walk along the top of the fence. He was a war veteran and had been a POW in Russia for many years. In those days, according to him, Russian soldiers made POWs climb up tall chimneys and shot them from the ground for fun. His fellow POWs fell or got shot to death. Luckier men continued to climb up and survived.
My grandfather was one of the latter. Although he was old and a little drunk after the festival meal, he balanced himself and walked on the narrow fence, which was merely 4 inches wide and 13 feet above the ground. Watching him easily walking on the fence, I understood how dreadful his life as a POW was. This must be a cinch for him compared to forced acrobatics. He jumped off the fence and said smiling, “See? It’s easy!” while I was crying for many reasons…

because I was able to monopolize him

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My grandfather on my mother’s side was a quiet, generous and kind person. Because I lived with my grandfather on my father’s side, whose character was completely opposite to him, I liked him all the more.

　One day, when I was little, I was left in the backseat of the car with him while my parents were out for an errand. He suggested playing ‘rock-paper-scissors’. He took his notebook out of his pocket, and started drawing a score table. He had an honorable position in the local society, and there were many important notes and appointments in his notebook. But he was drawing the table for his granddaughter next to them without any hesitation. And the rock-paper-scissors match of my grandfather vs. me began. It had a lot of rounds and continued long after my parents came back to the car and we got going. He looked so merry, and I was absorbed in the game.

　It was my happiest time with him not because the game was fun but because I was able to monopolize him. There were only two of us without my younger sister around. The match ended with his great victory by a wide margin…

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: A Japanese Girl in The Catholic School of Kyoto 2 by Hidemi Woods

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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.
 
Since I became the class clown at school, I was quite popular back then, not only among the students but also among the teachers. When I needed to see a teacher at the hallway in front of the teachers’ office, other teachers would come out of the office to talk with me. They would stand in a circle around me and laugh at my jokes and stories. Inevitably, it was always noisy wherever I showed up.
The vice-principal was a stern, rigid teacher called Sister Maris Stella. She was the oldest sister at school and dressed in a traditional, old-fashioned Catholic gown. She was strict to students and teachers alike. Everybody tried to keep away from her because she always reproved someone for something. She would appear wherever people were buzzing, to shut them up.
She had recognized that I was often a seismic center of the buzz and given me a look of ‘You again’. Every time the teachers were cracking up with me in front of the teachers’ office, she poked her long-veiled head out of the office. That was a signal for the end of the show. Teachers would disperse quickly while I stopped talking. Sometimes we failed to notice her and she stood behind the circle listening to me. The moment someone spotted her, they would walk away. In those cases, she would ask me what I was talking about. I would apologize and leave.
And one thought occurred to me. She didn’t come out to reprove us. She might want to join us. Even after I realized that, I had no way to keep talking once other teachers ran away. As a result, we just kept leaving when she came up. And one day, when we were scattering at the sight of her as usual, she grabbed my arm. She said to me, “That’s it! You hate me, don’t you? I know you hate me! I know, because I hate you too!” Over her shoulder was a statue of the Virgin Mary with a plaque saying ‘Love and Humanity’. It was the most inconsistent scene I had ever experienced.
Months later, there came a general-school-cleaning day. I was unlucky enough to be assigned to the school cafeteria of which Sister Maris Stella took charge. As if she got a golden opportunity, she made a slave of me. She chose the dirtiest floor just for me and made me crawl to clean up thoroughly, yelling “Not enough! Do it over!” repeatedly. I felt her revenge so strongly. Given the hatred and now the revenge, I deepened the mystery of Catholic sisters…

do the exact opposite

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When I was little and took a bath with my
mother, she said in the bathtub, “Never marry
someone with whom you fall in love.” In her
theory, marriage for love is a ticket to
unhappiness because love burns out quickly.
She insisted that I should have an arranged
marriage as she did. She and my father would
find a man for me and do all the necessary
background checks so that I’d be better off.
She also once said to me in the bathtub, “I
married your father because he was wealthy.
Do you think I would choose such an ugly man
like him if he didn’t have money?” When I
grew up, I learned that she had been seeing
someone before she met my father at an
arranged meeting, but she chose my father
because he was richer and had better lineage.
I think she dealt with the devil and sold
herself at that moment. Since then, she has
been unhappy and that made her a person
filled with vanity and malice. When it comes to
decision making, I always imagine what my
mother would do and do the exact opposite.
Since I adapted this rule, my life has been
easier and better…

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