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 Lately, I met a young person who used an outdated cellphone.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