A Cellphone without a Camera

 Lately, I met a young person who used an outdated cellphone. I was surprised because I assumed all young people used smartphones. I asked him why. He said, “This cellphone is very convenient in my workplace.”

 He was working for a famous carmaker. The car industry is very competitive. There are many secrets in the factories. The company banned people from entering some areas with their smartphones that have cameras. His cell phone was an old one without a camera, so he could bring it to any area.

 Other workers need to go to a special department where they break the cameras of the phones. The department would signal that the cameras are surely broken, and then the workers can enter the special areas with their phones.

 He said he wanted to buy a new phone, but he couldn’t find a phone that had no camera. As an engineer, he didn’t want to break a new camera.

 Phone makers tend to create new functions, but I think they should make phones with fewer features. In Japan, there are many top-secret factories. All the workers of these factories would buy phones without cameras.

Picture by Graphs

Professor U

 

 

U is a professor at Tokyo University. When she was a graduate student in Kyoto, she attended my mother’s lectures. They got along well. Theirs was like a master-pupil relationship. A few years later, U become more famous than my mother. She published a million bestselling books and become a professor at the most reputable university in Japan. But she still respected my mother. Sometimes Professor U participated in my mother’s events or activities in Nagoya. Sometimes Professor U wrote introductions for my mother’s books. In addition, Professor U sometimes mentioned my mother’s name in the media, saying, “There is a wonderful woman in Nagoya,” or something along those lines.

A few months after my mother’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease, she and her colleagues held an event in Nagoya. Professor U came from Tokyo to participate. At that point, my mother already needed my help to participate in the event. But I didn’t make an official announcement about her disease. She ran many organizations, so I just told some key persons in the organizations about her diagnosis. I thought they needed time to organize new systems that weren’t dependent on my mother. My healthy mother’s fame would give them an advantage as they created strong new systems. By contrast, if everyone knew about my mother’s disease, the organizations could lose their influence.

After the event, Professor U, my mother, and I were alone in a cab. We were headed to Nagoya station. I didn’t say anything, but Professor U figured out what my mother had from a short conversation with her. I realized she had noticed. But I didn’t say anything.

When we arrived at Nagoya station, Professor U was teary-eyed as she gave my mother a big hug. But my mother didn’t understand why she was crying. My mother and I saw Professor U off. She lived in Tokyo. She would be taking a super express train to Tokyo.

However, Professor U went in the wrong direction. She did not walk toward the ticket gate for the super express. Some people described Nagoya station as a labyrinth. It had a complicated structure. Even people who lived in Nagoya would lose their way. I thought she’d lost her way. So I almost followed her to help her. But I changed my mind. She’d just found out her master had Alzheimer’s disease. This was one of the most important scenes in her life, one she would repeatedly remember. No one had asked me to play a part in that scene. It made sense to let her lose her way: to separate from her master and lose her way.

A few years later, all of my mother’s acquaintances knew about her disease. We held an event in Nagoya. Once more, Professor U participated. The first half of the event was a speech by another professor. Professor U sat down next to my mother in the audience. She kept holding my mother’s hand during the speech.

I experienced something similar: I was separated from my master and lost my way. I visit my master’s grave every year. I feel cold when I touch the gravestone. Today, my mother could be a warm gravestone. It is difficult to communicate with her. But, if you hold her hand, at least it feels warm.

Picture by Kyoko

Remote

 

In the initial stage of Alzheimer’s disease, the patient tends to lose items. My mother did. Among the items that caused trouble were air conditioners’ remote controls.

In the winter, we used a gas heater with a fan. It didn’t have a remote. So there was no problem. But in the summer, we used air conditioners with remotes. My mother repeatedly lost the remotes. That was a problem. When she lost her bankbook, a complicated procedure was necessary for its reissuing. But the banks didn’t ask us for too much money. It cost about 10 dollars. The air conditioners’ remotes were a different story.

These days, some companies sell economic remotes that can be used for all kinds of air conditioners. In those days, however, I had to call the air conditioner manufacturer to request a new remote. Then they would send it to us. It cost about 200 dollars.

Every time my mother lost a remote, we had to pay 200 dollars. Then, during the two or three days it took for the new remote to arrive, we had to endure the hot summer without the air conditioner. Alternatively, we couldn’t turn off the air conditioner, resulting in an expensive electric bill.

My solution was the same as the one I adopted when my mother lost her bankbooks: We would have two remotes for every air conditioner, and I would keep one of them. When my mother insisted she’d lost her remotes, I just used my hidden remote, saying, “I’ve found it.” When she lost her bankbook, an elaborate charade was necessary. I had to pretend to look for the bankbook. Then I would put a new one somewhere and let her find it because I didn’t want her to suspect me. In the case of the remotes, the charade wasn’t necessary. My mother would never suspect that I was interested in them. She had Alzheimer’s disease, but she was not crazy.

Now I can buy a remote online for almost all air-conditioner makes with less than 10 dollars. I wish that had been possible when I was taking care of my mother. It would have been easy and economic.

By the way, “Summer Time Machine Blues” is a Japanese theatrical play. It was also made into a movie. The theatrical masterpiece was released in 2001. It’s a great science fiction comedy about some people looking for an air-conditioner remote using a time machine. If we’d had economic remotes when it was released, the story wouldn’t have made sense.

I am glad for contemporary convenience. But too many convenient tools could take the drama out of our lives.

Picture by Sato

Flight to Angkor Wat

 

At the end of the 1980s, my mother started a non-profit initiative that involved sending sewing machines to Vietnam. After WW2, Japanese women had worked with sewing machines to help their families. But, subsequently, the Japanese economy had recovered and few people had continued to use sewing machines. So it came about that there were too many sewing machines in Japan. At the same time, it happened that people needed sewing machines in Vietnam. Hence, my mother sent over 1200 sewing machines to Vietnam.

I took part in the initiative and travelled to Vietnam. At one point, we decided to go Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which was next to Vietnam. We were advised to take an airplane to Cambodia. So we did just that.

When we arrived the airport, I was surprised. It was very small: a small one-story house. My local town’s railway station was bigger than that airport! There was no airplane, but many people had gathered at the airport. Perhaps there were about 100 people.

After a few minutes, a small, outdated airplane arrived. I told my Japanese colleagues a joke: “If all of these passengers take that airplane, most of us will have to fly standing up.” All of my colleagues cracked up.

Unfortunately, the humorous situation I had envisioned came to pass. Over 100 people needed to take the small airplane. Fortunately, I was able to find a seat, but most of the passengers had to fly standing up. It was almost like rush hour on the subway in Japan. The airplane was jam-packed.

Even scarier than that was the fact that there was plenty of packing tape taped to the wall on the inside of the airplane. I joked again: “Apparently there are many cracks in this airplane.” We cracked up again.

It was summer, and it was very hot. But there was no air conditioning on the airplane. When we took off, the airplane made noises I had never heard before. It shook violently before finally stabilizing. At that point, I felt at ease. Then a cool wind reached us from somewhere. I thought to myself, “Oh! They have an air conditioner. They probably didn’t use it when the plane was on the ground for some environmental reasons.”

But I was wrong. That was cold air from the outside. As the airplane rose to a higher altitude, the cold air gushed in between the strips of packing tape. It turned out that the airplane actually had cracks. Once more, a humorous situation I had imagined had come to pass. The cold air looked white, and the inside of the airplane was filled with white fog. Eventually, I couldn’t even see the face of the person next to me.

In those days, Vietnam and Cambodia had problems. So it was difficult to go to Angkor Wat. Three years later, Angkor Wat became a World Heritage site. So we gained a great and valuable opportunity to visit it.

However I can’t remember anything but the outdated airplane. I was nineteen years old then. Later, upon joining graduate school, I would start to develop an interest in history. But in those days, Angkor Wat was just an odd house to me.

I want to visit Angkor Wat again!

Picture by freehandz

 

Funeral

 

Once, when one of my loved ones passed away, I couldn’t attend the funeral. So I tried to attend other funerals as much as I could. Sometimes I attended the funeral of a person to whom I was not closely related. I believed that a person who was dying had to be going to the place where my loved one lived. So I felt that I could connect with my loved one by attending that person’s funeral. However, when my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, needed 24-hour care, I found it difficult to attend funerals.

The common Japanese-style funeral gives one two opportunities to attend a ceremony. The first one is tsuya or the wake, which originally meant an all-night vigil over a body. It starts in the evening. Those who are closest to the deceased stay at might night. The second one is sougi or the actual funeral, which starts on the next day at noon. My mother used to go to an adult daycare center daily. But I needed to be at home when she left and when she came back. Tsuya was too late and sougi was too early to accommodate my schedule. Of course, using the short-stay service for adults was an option, but we would have had to make a reservation a few months in advance. And no one could predict when a funeral would be held a few months ahead of time. Thus, during that period, I could not attend some funerals.

However, my mother sometimes said mysterious words to me. Some of them might have been spiritual messages, for instance, “Do you understand why you appeared to this world?” It was possible to think of my mother as already being a half-resident of the other world. Taking care of her was a possible way to connect to a deceased loved one.

Now that my mother is in a nursing home and I am no longer responsible for her day-to-day care, I can finally attend funerals again. But, my friends, please don’t die! I hate funerals. I sincerely hope you will live long lives.

Picture by Matu

bankbook

 

One of the most serious problems of my mother who had Alzheimer’s disease was repeatedly losing bankbooks. We reissued her bankbooks again and again. After we reissued, the lost old bankbooks would be found, but these were already invalid. However, the new bankbooks would get lost again. We could not deposit money from the banks. To take care of my mother, we needed money.

At that time, my mother had a secretary and an accountant. One day they asked me to keep my mother’s bankbooks. I felt odd because I assumed children should not read parents’ bankbooks. I did not realize Alzheimer’s disease could cause a situation like this. I kept my mother’s bankbooks, but I did not read them. I just put them in my desk.

One day, when I came back home, my mother was angry and said, “Do you know where my bankbooks are?”

I answered honestly, “Your secretary and accountant asked me to keep your bankbooks.”

She got angrier and said, “Don’t touch my bankbooks! Give them back to me immediately!”

I did not have a choice, so I gave her back the bankbooks.

After a few days, the secretary and the accountant extremely scolded me. “She will lose the bankbooks soon. You do not know how complicated the required processes are to reissue the bankbooks!”

They were right. My mother repeatedly lost the bankbooks.

The solution I thought of was to fake the bankbooks. First, I pretended we lost my mother’s bankbooks to the banks so they would give us new ones. Second, I gave my mother old invalid bankbooks then kept the new ones. When my mother insisted she lost the bankbooks, I pretended to look for the bankbooks. Secretly, I would put the new bankbooks where my mother could find them. I let her find the new bankbooks by herself. After she found them and attended to something else, I would take back the new bankbooks and keep them.

To prevent my mother from realizing that her bankbooks were invalid or from using her bankbooks, I always needed to put enough money in her wallet.

It was so complicated and bothersome. Furthermore, I felt guilty as I tricked my mother and the banks. However, I could not find a better way to solve it.

Some older people tend to feel secure when they view their bankbooks, but I feel otherwise.

Picture by Graphs

 

 

Disgrace to the World

Minakata Kumagusu (1867–1941) was a Japanese author, biologist, naturalist, and ethnologist. He worked internationally. He would sometimes contribute an article to a foreign magazine. However, he was famous as a kind of freak.

Once, he argued with a governor on a government policy. Kumagusu picked up mushrooms in a mountain and put them into a bag. Then he visited the governor’s house and threw the bag to the governor’s head. Kumagusu was immediately caught by the governor’s supporters and was arrested by the police. After the police scolded him, he was released. When he met his granddaughter, he explained the incident like a heroic story: “I beat up most of his supporters, but there were too many supporters. So finally I was caught.”

I read this story on a newspaper that interviewed his granddaughter. I wondered, Why mushrooms? He was a genius. He might have a reason that I could not understand.

Afterward, he wrote bad things about the governor on foreign magazines. Kumagusu boasted about them on his book and wrote, “Disgrace to the world!”

I just thought of never fighting against any governors and geniuses.

Picture by Anastasia Lembrik

 

Shopping

 

My mother had a successful life. She turned her hobby into her job. But this also meant that she was hobbyless. When she was active, she had really busy days. I think her recreational activity was shopping. Every weekend, she and my father would get into their car and head out to shop. Both of them had grown up during WWII. During those days, there had been shortages of various supplies in Japan. Hence, for my parents, shopping could be the most attractive leisurely activity.

About seven years later, after my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she attended adult day care daily. But, this was not an option on Sundays. Hence, my father would take her shopping on Sundays. But he ultimately passed away. My wife was busy on Sundays because she was a stage lighting artist. That meant that I had to stay with my mother at our house because we could not leave her alone. If she had gone out, she could have gone missing.

During those days, we spent Sundays shopping. The nearest small supermarket was half an hour’s walk away. We would walk to the supermarket slowly. It was said that walking was good for those who had Alzheimer’s disease. After we arrived at the supermarket, I would give my mother a shopping basket and say, “You can buy anything you want.” Then I would leave her alone and go to the smoking area. All exits were visible from the smoking area. So there was no possibility of her leaving the supermarket and getting lost. After smoking, I would reenter the supermarket and find my mother. She usually had something in her basket. We would pay for that and go back home, where I would cook the food she had selected.

Sometimes this worked; sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t know how to cook the food my mother had chosen. When that was the case, I would wait for my wife to come back from work and ask her, “Do you know how to cook this food?” When the answer was positive, she would cook the item for us on the next day. However, sometimes even my wife didn’t know how to cook the food. I had previously assumed that a supermarket would sell only food that was familiar to us. But my mother sometimes picked up food items that were unknown to us: “Hey mom, even you have never cooked this food. I know because I have never eaten it!”

Farmers and fishermen, I own you an apology. Sometimes we had to dump the food because we didn’t know how to cook it. But please forgive us: After shopping, my mother would appear to be very happy.

Picture by Sato

Cherry Tree, Cat, and Train

 

It took two or three years for a doctor to give my mother a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Those were the hardest days of my life. At my mother’s place of work, her coworkers had suspected that she had a medical problem. So I took her to many hospitals. But, at that time, no doctor was able to determine what she had. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, identifying it is very difficult, even for doctors.

All doctors used the dementia rating scale that Dr. Hasegawa had established. It involved a doctor asking a patient some questions. Depending on the answers, the doctor would determine whether or not the patient had a disease. An example follows in the next paragraph.

The doctor said to the patient, “Please memorize these words: cherry tree, cat, and train. I will ask you to remember them later.” Then the doctor asked a few different questions. Subsequently, the doctor asked the patient, “Can you remember the three words I said?” If the patient’s condition was serious, it was difficult for him/her to respond.

My mother’s case was different. She was experiencing the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Hence, she answered perfectly. Furthermore, many doctors let her memorize the three words repeatedly. Thus, she had no difficulty remembering them.

Having anticipated this kind of case, Dr. Hasegawa created a test B, which employed the words, “apricot tree, dog, and bicycle.” However, no doctor used test B.

Dr. Hasegawa’s test words described a plant, an animal, and a vehicle. Hence, doctors could quite conceivably have used “willow tree, monkey, and car” or “baobab tree, tyrannosaurus rex, and Segway.” But none of the doctors we met had used either option.

I have no hard feelings regarding the doctors who failed to identify my mother’s disease. But I suspect that doctors are basically unimaginative people.

Picture by piangtawan

More Than Three Caregivers

 

It is said that if you take care of a patient with Alzheimer’s at your home, you need more than three caregivers. A patient with Alzheimer’s needs a 24-hour care every day. We should recognize that caregiving is a job. Being paid or unpaid does not matter. When only one or two workers are assigned in a workplace needing 24-hour work every day, they get sick. It should be eight hours per person, so that workplace needs more than three workers. A patient with Alzheimer’s should not be taken care of by less than three caregivers.

In our case, my father, my wife, and I had achieved a short-term three-caregiver system. Before I got married, the caregivers were just my father and me. After my father passed away, the caregivers were just my wife and me. Of course, we often used day service and short stay. However, we had difficult days.

A patient with Alzheimer’s needs three caregivers, but if the caregivers want to pursue their careers and their hobbies, there should be more caregivers.

Taking care of a patient with Alzheimer’s is not a complicated job. It is simple if it is for a short time. However, many caregivers get sick, commit suicide, and even commit murder in Japan. These situations happen because most of them do their jobs for a long time without any break. Any job could make people insane if that is the case.

In Japan, hundreds of caregivers commit suicide and murder. The government is trying to establish socialized caregiving systems. Of course, we need those systems, but we should treat caregivers as family members, relatives, and neighbors. That is a respectable lifesaving action.

Picture by hobi

Sandwich

 

When I was a university student, I almost did not attend my classes. I was crazy about acting on stage. I was an amateur actor.

One evening, I happened to meet a girl at a subway station whom I got acquainted on a theatrical event. She was tremendously beautiful. We had not met for months. We enjoyed chatting on the platform. When the train approached, she whispered, “I am hungry.” It was dinnertime. Now I believe she made a great chance to ask for a dinner. If I had taken the chance, I would have a different life. However, I was a stupid young man.

“Yes! I have a sandwich. I will give it to you,” I said.

Unbelievably, I took out a sandwich from my bag and gave it her. That was my leftover lunch. She burst out laughing, but I could not understand why. I thought, I gave her my precious sandwich, but why was she laughing?

She was a beautiful, perfect, sweet lady. After she laughed, she ate my sandwich, smiling.

If I had recognized her sign at that time, it would have never happened. In those days, I was not well-off. I was a nameless amateur actor. I did not even have ten dollars in my wallet. How could I ask her for dinner?

Today I am smarter and richer, but not young.

Picture by takagix

 

Signature

 

 At an early stage of her Alzheimer’s disease, my mother had become unable to write her own signature. In most cases, Alzheimer’s patients can still write their signature at the later stages because such a skill is part of crystallized intelligence, as people do it many times in their life. Repeated practice protects some intelligence from the disease, but in my mother’s case, she had already lost her signature-writing ability early on. She had two signatures: her real name and her business name. The pronunciations are the same but the spellings are different.

Whenever she tried to write her signature, she needed to know if it was a private situation or a business situation. Then she would get confused and would stop writing.

Signing one’s name is a very important ability for Alzheimer’s disease patients. Banks or public offices ask for their own handwritten signature. In most cases, they refuse to accept someone else’s signature on behalf of the patients. For example, if a patient wants to sign a will, their signature can validate a will that was written by their lawyer. A will could be a tool that aging people can use; if a patient doesn’t have control over their will, it could be disadvantageous for both the patient and their caregivers.

Some people change their name when they marry. Some people use pen names. Most of my theater friends use stage names. If these people, including myself, had Alzheimer’s disease, we could encounter serious problems.

Are there any good solutions to this?

Picture by sashkin7

Closely Cropped Head

 

  I don’t know what it means in the English-speaking world. In Japan, closely cropping one’s head is a way to express apology. It is not popular, and it is too classic, but it still works.

When I was about 20 years old, I made huge mistakes. I decided to closely crop my head. It was my first time, and it was a fresh experience. Feeling the wind or sunshine on my scalp was a totally new experience.

But I also had a trouble because of the hairstyle.

In those days, I had a part-time job at a restaurant very late at night. Public transportation wasn’t available at midnight. I commute to the restaurant by motorbike. But one day, my motorbike was stolen, but I couldn’t take a break from my job. So I rode a taxi to the restaurant. My daily wage was the same as the taxi fare.

On the first day, after I finished work, I tried to hail a taxi. But all the taxis ignored me. They obviously saw me but went away. This has never happened in my life, and I wondered why. I had a guess: it was because of my closely cropped head. In Japan, people who closely crop their head are usually Buddhist monks, high school baseball players, some extremists, ex-cons, and yakuza. Buddhist monks and high school baseball players would never hail a taxi at night. Taxi drivers were afraid of me because of my hairstyle.

So I wore a hood and hid my head. Then I hailed a taxi, which stopped in front of me. After getting in the taxi, I took off my hood and showed my head to the taxi driver. He was surprised. I told some jokes to help him relax, but I failed. He didn’t even smile at me.

I hope I don’t make any more huge mistakes in my life, and if I do, I want to express my apology in a different way.

Picture by freehandz

I made a short animation again!

Long time no see him!

How many steps does a megastore clerk walk?

 

It is recommended that we walk about 10,000 steps every day for our health.

 A friend of mine used to work for a suburban megastore as a clerk. Clerks had to try all the goods in the store. If they were selling a new type of dog food, he had to eat it so that he could describe its taste to the customers.

 One day, they started selling a new pedometer. He tried it of course. He walked around the huge store all day as he usually did. From the pedometer, he learned that he walked over 30,000 steps a day.

 Once we had a small shopping arcade in my town. There were many privately owned stores in it then. Today, it is a deserted shopping street. If the arcade were still in use, I could have walked around it and bought products from it every day. I might have walked about 10,000 steps. Instead, I now drive a car to a megastore every week, and I go to a gym for exercise.

 The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries has announced that about 8 million people have limited access to shopping facilities in Japan. People who can’t drive cars can’t go to the suburbs to shop. Someday, when I have to give up driving, I could become one of them.

 We might be making a terrible mistake.

Picture by freehandz

My Great-Aunt and Alzheimer’ Disease

 

 My grandmother’s sister was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007. Her husband had already passed away. They didn’t have a child. She lived by herself. When I realized she had Alzheimer’s disease, I started to support her. I called her every morning and helped her take her medicine. I visited her every week to clean her house. I took her to a hospital every month. I did these for three years until she passed away.

 Both my mother and my great-aunt had Alzheimer’s disease. Both of them were smart and intelligent when they were young. My great-aunt had a lot of books in her house and was a master of the traditional tea ceremony, sado. She was also great practitioner of traditional Japanese archery, kyudo. She was chosen as a participant in the annual nationwide archery competition in Kyoto many times.

 I heard it is rare for an Alzheimer’s patient to realize the disease themselves. But apparently, my great-aunt knew she had it. She tried to establish some countermeasures for the disease by herself.

1.    She took a walk every day. It was at risk for getting lost. But in my great-aunt’s case, it worked effectively. She took a walk at the same time and on the same route every day. This decreases the risk of getting lost. She tried to inform neighbors about herself. She actually had many acquaintances in the area.

2.    She quit cooking to prevent fires. She ate breakfast in the same café. She bought lunch in the same market. She ate dinner in the same restaurant. I had the opportunity to meet the shopkeeper of the café, who called me whenever my great-aunt had a problem.

3.    She also destroyed the bath in her house and used a public bath. Many elderly people tend to die when they take a bath. In a public bath, someone could help her if she was having trouble. In her house, I found some items belonging to the public bath that she forgot to give back.

4.    She retained the newspaper and milk delivery. I knew she was not interested in any news and that she didn’t drink milk, so I suggested that she cancel these. But she stubbornly refused. I didn’t know a system for this. If one didn’t take in their newspaper or milk from one’s post for a long time, the delivery office would inform the police station. Policemen would come for a safety check. If the worst happened to my great-aunt, a policeman would find her.

5.    She invited a Buddhist monk every month-anniversary of her late husband’s death to pray. If the worst happened to her, the monk would find her in a month. She didn’t do this when she was young.

These are all I could do and remember. Maybe she did other countermeasures. Basically she tried to establish relationships with many people. An Alzheimer’s patient tends to be reclusive, but my great-aunt dared to keep going out.

 One day, when my great-aunt and I were walking together, an old lady came across us and whispered to me, “She has a mental problem.”

I answered, “I knew it. She is supported by the government, too.”

After the old lady walked away from us, my great-aunt said to me, “I am sure she said I have a mental problem, right?”

I was surprised that my great-aunt knew her disease. I was also surprised that my great aunt knew some neighbors were telling rumors about her.

 Going out as an Alzheimer’s patient results in many acquaintances. Some of them could be supporters, but others could be full of gossip. She knew that, but she bravely kept going to the café, the market restaurant, and the public bath. She courageously confronted the disease by herself.

 What I did was just a little backup.

Picture by teltel-woo

Ninjas and Clergypersons

 

 I recently read an academic book about ninjas: Ninja no Rekishi by Yuji Yamada (Kadokawa-Sensho, 2016). The author had read ancient documents about them and had analyzed them.

  I assumed ninjas were just specialists in some kind of martial arts. Apparently they also had various responsibilities. Setting fire to the enemy territory was one of them. According to this book, some documents written about ninjas mentioned some rules about setting fires. If you are a ninja, you should not set fire to any holy places, such as temples or shrines. If you didn’t have a choice but to set fire to such a place, you should not harm any clergypersons. You have to warn the clergypersons so that they can escape. You have to promise them that your monarch will build a greater temple or shrine after the war and let the monarch keep that promise. If you don’t follow the rules, it would be disadvantageous to your monarch. If you show respect to holy places and clergypersons, people in the enemy territory could welcome the new monarch after the war.

 These ancient documents could be like textbooks for ninjas. We should doubt that ninjas actually followed the rules, but if they strictly did, they could be smarter than many of us who live a lawless modern world.

Picture by Ayutaro Papa

Social Problems Are Sometimes Disguised

When I was a university senior, Japan was experiencing an economic bubble, and employment was plentiful. Companies called me every day inviting me to join their ranks, to the point where it became tiresome.

Then, when I was a graduate student, the bubble burst. It became increasingly difficult for senior students to find jobs, with many of them telling me terrible stories about their job searches. The media misunderstood conditions, with some blaming young people, calling them lazy and saying that they are parasites feeding on their parents. However, most people in mass media jobs were elites who found their jobs under better economic conditions, and they had no understanding of the challenges faced by new entrants to the job market. Lately, a common description in the media of this period has been “an ice age for job seekers.”

I made a similar mistake. A few years ago, I read an article that stated that some delivery service staff would simply place notifications in clients’ mailboxes instead of ringing their doorbells because they didn’t want to deliver heavy packages during their shifts. I was shocked and angry, and I called these delivery people lazy because I lacked understanding of the conditions they faced. Because of the rapid spread of Internet shopping, delivery companies were understaffed. Most delivery service staff worked very hard under terrible conditions, which was revealed by the media a few years later.

When social problems occur, we cannot immediately fully understand them. Problems tend to be disguised as rumors and gossip about specific people. Therefore, if we hear these types of rumors and gossip, we should calmly assess the information, as it could be hiding the real problem.

Picture by Jimsy

 

My “Unemployed” Father

 

My late-father worked as a proofreader for a local newspaper, with his workday starting once the writers had finished their articles and ending when the rotary press started to roll. He would go to the office at 3:00 pm, work till midnight, come home early in the morning, and then go to sleep. When he woke, he would spend time on his hobbies—gardening and pottery.

But our neighbors misunderstood my father. One neighbor once whispered to me, “I am so sorry your father is like that…” She assumed my father was unemployed because he would take care of our garden during normal working hours, clearly having just woken up. In contrast, my mother was obviously employed: she ran a supplemental school from home and delivered lectures throughout Japan.

Although our family actually had a double income, our neighbors never saw my father going to and from work and simply assumed that my mother was working because my father was unemployed.

We can enjoy reading the morning newspaper because people like my father worked overnight to produce the paper, but most people with these types of jobs are probably misunderstood by their neighbors and viewed as unemployed. So kudos to all the midnight workers! Kudos again!

Picture by BNP

You Killed an Electrician in Your Previous Life?

In 2014, we moved, and we had to equip our new home with household appliances. Soon most of these appliances started to break down. In the beginning, I joked with my wife, “This happened because you killed an electrician in your previous life.” We laughed, but the appliances kept breaking down one after another. Eventually, we found the situation creepy, and my wife started to get mad when I repeated my joke.

When an electrician come to our house to fix our appliances, I said, “We’re sorry—we killed an electrician in a previous life, so all our appliances broke down.”

The electrician replied, “That’s not true. These days appliances are poorly made. Most Japanese companies make their appliances in foreign countries, and maintaining quality standards in foreign countries is difficult.”

During the 2008 financial crisis, many electricians lost their jobs because Japanese appliance companies looked for cheap labor abroad. I don’t believe foreign electricians are responsible for the poor quality of appliances. To develop good electricians, companies must invest time and resources, as many Japanese companies previously did.

Our appliance problems were not the result of killing an electrician in a previous life. Instead, it is the result of the curse of companies firing well-trained Japanese electricians and then being too stingy to train foreign electricians.

Picture by Hanaboo

A Great Doctor in the Countryside

 

 There is a Japanese folk tale known as “The Doctor in the Countryside.” It is the story of a doctor who lived deep in a forest. One day, there was an emergency in the village: a patient needed the doctor. He was called. He tried to take a short cut to the village but encountered a giant snake, which swallowed him whole. Inside the snake, he used a laxative, which enabled him to get out safely and to finally reach the patient.

 I live in a countryside of sorts too. And, one day, I came across a great doctor.

 When my late father was alive, he had cataracts. The result of his visual acuity test was less than 20/100. So, he had an operation at the nearest general hospital. Apparently, the doctor who operated on him did a great job. My father’s visual acuity test result became 20/10.

I was highly impressed and said to the doctor, “You must be a great doctor.”

He answered, “I only did what I had to.”

That’s what a great doctor would say.

I have had eye problems from my birth, so I wanted him to become my family doctor. When I made this request, he said, “Sorry. I have to move to a different hospital in the downtown area next month.”

 He was probably headhunted.

 In the folk tale, a great doctor came back from a giant snake; in the modern world, a great doctor could never come back from a city.

Picture by saki

“Water” in the Musician’s World

 

 In the 2000s, I had the opportunity to sing a song for an audience to the accompaniment of a big band of about thirty musicians.

 I had some experience as an actor, but as a singer, I was relatively inexperienced. I was very nervous on the day of the performance.

 In the green room, I knew no one. I was almost trembling with tension. There was a musician with a plastic bottle. He was drinking a clear liquid from it. The bottle’s label had been taken off. Instead, the word “water” had been written on it by hand. I found that interesting and asked him about it.

 “You wrote ‘water’ on your bottle. In the musician’s world, there must be a clear liquid that is easy to mistake for water? Am I right?”

 He smiled and said, “Sure! You want to drink some?”

 I was very thirsty because I was nervous. And I trusted him. So, assuming that it was water, I took a long swig.

It turned out to be sake, Japanese alcohol.

 Apparently, the musician was drinking sake but wanted to hide it from the others because he wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol before the performance. So he put sake in a plastic bottle and wrote “water” on it. Then he pretended it was drinking water.

 Under normal circumstances, I couldn’t drink alcohol at all. My face turned red, and I staggered. On this occasion, I ultimately sang the song to the audience. I actually can’t remember the details. Apparently, our performance was good. All I can say is at least the alcohol eliminated my tension.

 Tonight, please enjoy “water” in the musician’s world. As for me, I will never drink that “water” again.

Picture by studiostoks