students

Podcast: the homecoming event

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment
Episode from My School Days in Kyoto: A Japanese Girl Found Her Own Way  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. 
 
Back in my schooldays, there were required curricula specifically for  the homecoming event. Students must participate in either an exhibition,  retail, or a play. I chose a play every homecoming when I was a junior  high school student. When the homecoming’s preparation began in my ninth  grade, my passion for the theater was at its peak since I had been  regularly cast for a major role in the drama club at school. Other  students knew that and I was appointed as the ninth-grade play team  leader almost automatically. Everyone had no interest in a required  curriculum and I had to put together a play by leading fifty unwilling,  reluctant team members. From the first meeting, I encountered  foreseeable difficulties. No one brought up any suggestion of what play  we would show at the homecoming. When I uttered a Japanese classic  novel, they unanimously shouted, “That’s it! That’ll be our play!” in  order to finish the meeting quickly. Our play was decided like this and I  dramatized the novel for the first time in my life. I had thought it  would be difficult, but it was unexpectedly so much fun. I finished the  script quite fast. And then, the casting. I had decided not to be cast  in the play myself because I had been already cast in a play of the  drama club for the homecoming. I didn’t want to appear in every play at  school like an attention freak. I thought it was cool that I produced,  dramatized and directed for this curriculum play. But in the team,  everyone had neither experience nor skill in acting and they didn’t want  to be cast. It was again left to my sole decision. While I was choosing  some students who seemed to like appearing on the stage, a girl timidly  raised her hand. She said she wanted to act. Although I finally got a  volunteer, I hesitated to cast her for a moment. She was not pretty.  Other students started giggling at her brave attempt. Instantly I came  to myself and remembered the fact that I was also regarded as an ugly  girl at school. My bad looks contributed to continuous typecasting as an  old, wicked woman in drama club’s plays. As I had been weary of  disadvantage of appearance, I cast her as a leading role. My decision  made other students gape. Thus, I had trying three months for the play  with totally amateur actors and backstage staff…

Podcast: summer camp when I was a freshman

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment
Episode from My School Days in Kyoto: A Japanese Girl Found Her Own Way  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. 
 
The high school I attended held a mandatory summer camp when I was a  freshman. The students chose activities such as swimming, hiking,  cycling and so on beforehand. To spend the time in the camp together, my  group of close friends at school decided to choose the same activities.  We considered carefully which ones were the easiest and mildest, and  chose archery and cycling. A couple of months later the cycling day in  the camp arrived. We set off on each rental bicycle. Right after that,  one of my friends, called Yone, fell. She quickly got back on her bike  and we started again. Immediately, she fell again. We stopped to wait  for her. She caught up with us by pushing her bike and said, ‘Sorry. Now  let’s go!” But the same thing was repeated for the third time, her  falling down, us waiting. We finally asked her what was going on and  heard her astonishing confession. She said, “I can’t ride a bike.” We  gaped. Being unable to ride a bike was nothing, but why did she choose  cycling among all activities then? And telling us now? We pressed her  for an explanation why she didn’t just say so when we decided on  cycling. She told us that she couldn’t because we were joyfully talking  about how easy cycling would be. In our group, she was the tenderest  one, but also a pushover. She always had no opinion of her own and  conformed to others. That was a given, but I never thought this much. We  were talking about pushing our bikes and going all the way on foot with  her when she said, “I’m ruining your plan for an easy activity. I can’t  make you walk all the way because of me. Please ride on. I think I can  manage along the way. I’m sorry. Sorry.” We mounted on the bike, not  pedaling but walking while Yone kept falling and saying sorry for a  million times. Her indecisive, weak-minded attitude has gradually gotten  on my nerves. A girl of other group whom I had barely talked before  pedaled back toward us. She had something to ask me. I answered and  chatted, and we hit it off instantly. When I realized, I pedaled with  her separating from my group. I stopped to wait at the foot of the  downward slope and heard a scream. It was Yone flying down the slope on  her bike and tumbling into a rice paddy.

He’s an ice cream man!

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment
Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels.com

When my uncle got married with my mother’s cousin by an arranged marriage, my grandfather paid for his new house. He was proud of having his own darkroom in the house. His hobby was photography and he used to have the latest models of a camera. He planned to enrich his hobby by developing pictures by himself.

　After he quit a job at a gas station, he found a job supplying ice cream to small candy stores. He finished drifting jobs, had two daughters and finally settled down. I visited his house with my parents one day, and found that his darkroom had been converted into a family closet. He explained he no longer spent so much time taking pictures as before, with a weak smile.

　Several years passed and I had become a student at a private Catholic school. The school was a prestigious girl’s school that included from the elementary school to the college. I had been there from the junior high and had acted as if I had been from a rich and noble family to fit in. By the time I advanced to the high school, I had been quite popular among the snobbish students. Most of their parents were rich, and they looked down some students whose parents weren’t so rich.

　One of those girls we looked down came to me and said, “I saw your uncle yesterday.” And she started talking about my uncle to my friends. “Do you know what her uncle is? He’s an ice cream man!” she giggled. Her parents ran a grocery store and my uncle went there to refill their ice cream case. He noticed her school uniform and told her I was his niece.

　Her point was that I was a niece of a funny, loud, rude ice cream supplier in spite of my snobbish attitude. She went on spreading her encounter with my uncle to other students and they all laughed at me. I was indignant rather than embarrassed…

Episode From An Old Tree in Kyoto /Hodemi Woods

Audiobook 1 : Japanese Dream by Hidemi Woods On Sale at online stores or apps. 
Audiobook 2 : My 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. 

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.

I felt as if I had been put in prison with a life sentence

Hidemi WoodsLeave a comment

It has gotten warmer little by little and spring is near. Shortly, cherry blossoms are blooming here and there around Japan, making a usually somber country beautiful. Cherry blossoms mean the season to begin a new year at a school and an office in Japan. It was spring when I entered elementary school and this time of year reminds me of how I felt at that time. At Japanese schools, the whole school assembly is held once a week. I remember the first assembly at the elementary school held in the schoolyard. The school had a large number of students, well over 2,000. They gathered in the schoolyard to listen to a principal’s weekly address, lined up in neat rows by the class and the grade. As I was in the first grade, my row was near the edge of the yard. I glanced at the far side of it, where the sixth-graders stood in line. They were tall and looked like grown-ups to me. And all of a sudden, a strong sense of claustrophobia seized me. I realized that I would keep coming to this school until I grew that big. Considering the excruciating two years I spent at kindergarten, coming here for six years seemed forever and torture. On top of that, it wouldn’t end there. Three years at junior high school and another three years at high school would follow. My mother had already talked about a college then, too. The day I would be freed from school I loathed so much would be so far away. I felt as if I had been put in prison with a life sentence, while the principal was congratulating the first-graders in his speech and cherry blossoms were warmly looking down…