The Two Professors and the Suit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was still a graduate student, I basically wore casual clothes and worn-out shirts and jeans in the university.

One day, Professor A scolded me. “You are a graduate student, not just a student. You should wear suit and tie!”

I didn’t have any particular interest in what I wear, so I bought suits and ties. I started to dress formally in the university.

However, one day, Professor B scolded me. “Don’t try to look good! If you have money to spend on the clothes, you should buy books and should study!”

 I could understand what Professor A and B said. I really respect both of them. As a result, I wore suit and tie when I met Professor A, and I wore worn-out casual clothes when I met Professor B.

 Professor A and B taught me a very interesting lesson: if an adult male, like me, is dressed formally or casually, the reactions of the people I have just met the first time are completely different, especially in daytime during weekdays. Sometimes, the results are good. Sometimes, they are not. If only I can balance formal and casual wear effectively, it would be very convenient.

Picture by maimu

Hiding in the Toilet and Studying

 

 When I was a child, I was a sickly boy. I often caught a cold. When I caught a cold, my mother took me to the hospital that my grandaunt runs. My grandaunt was a medical doctor. She always gave me an injection. Of course, I was scared of her and I hated her. She was a doctor. I had never felt any special feeling about that, but there were many stories about her life.

 This story is not about the grandaunt I mentioned before who had Alzheimer’s disease and who I took care of. This is a different person. This grandaunt is her sister.

 When my grandaunt was younger, she wanted to be a medical doctor, but her parents (my great-grandparents) objected to it. Even now, there are many barriers to female students becoming a doctor. Lately, it was reported that some medical university in Japan gave handicaps to female students when they took entrance exams. Those days there might be a lot of barriers to my grandaunt. She studied in the toilet to hide from her parents, and she broke through all the barriers. Finally, she became a doctor. She was the very first Western female medical doctor in Aichi Prefecture. There were a lot of female doctors in Chinese medical history, so we shouldn’t define her as the first female doctor. Anyway, she had been a general practitioner ever since I can remember.

I always wondered why my mother took me to the hospital where my grandaunt worked. That hospital was a little far away from our home. We needed to take a train to the hospital. It was hard for me because I had a cold. Recently, though, I solved the mystery. My mother was a famous feminist. She respected my grandaunt. My mother paid her a visit as a form of courtesy, and they exchanged information, and she supported the hospital.

 My grandaunt had four children. All of them became medical doctors. I heard my grandaunt planned to run a general hospital with her children. Unfortunately, the children works in different hospitals in different regions now. Just like how my grandaunt didn’t grow up as my great-grandparents wished, her children also didn’t grow up like she wished.

 I just dream too. If my grandaunt’s dreams had come true, then I could also work in a general hospital as a hospital clown.

Picture by akaishi

 

Hiding the Teacher’s Tears

 

 When I was a junior high school student, I was a member of the broadcasting club. Our main activities were broadcasting music and stories during lunchtime. Moreover, when our school had events, we prepared and took care of sound facilities.

 Ms. H was a musical teacher in our school, but she was once a professional classical singer. I heard she studied vocal music in Italy.

 One day, Ms. H produced an event. Every student in our school had soprano and alto recorders for music classes. She proposed we all play one tune in the gym at the same time. The tune was one of the most popular at that time—“Silk Road” composed by Kitaro. Ms. H taught how to play the composition in musical class. Sometimes she taught individually. Finally, she made all the students play “Silk Road.”

 At the day of the event, I didn’t take part in the performance because I was a member of the broadcasting club. One of the members had to take care of sound facilities in broadcasting room. That one was me.

 After the performance, someone rushed in the broadcasting room. It was Ms. H. She started to cry. I was surprised. But I hid myself because I thought I should not watch an adult who was crying. I remained hidden until Ms. H stopped crying, and I went out the broadcasting room. I didn’t tell this incident to anyone. At least I understood Ms. H wanted to hide her tears from her students.

 Now, I am the same age as Ms. H at that time. Lately I understood vaguely why she was crying.

 A musical teacher in a local junior high school where I commuted could not be in her position. She studied music in Italy. She might have aspired to be a successful and profitable singer. But if her dream came true, she would not be able to teach the junior high school students individually. She would not be able to listen to the group performance in the gym.

 In those days, there were hundreds of students in our school. That was before the birth rate decline. The masses of students playing “Silk Road” must be a spectacle.

 Ms. H also taught songs to a chorus club in the school. Our school became famous because the chorus club won many contests. Sometimes the chorus club sang songs in Latin.

 Now, I live a life which I didn’t dream of when I was young, but I enjoy my life. Sometimes happy events happen unexpectedly.

 In movies, we always watch dream-come-true stories, but a normal life could also be dramatic.

Picture by mr jun

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