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