People Who Hate Curry and Rice

 

 

 I love curry and rice very much. I couldn’t even imagine there are people who hate them. I have met two persons who do.

 The first one lived in a university dormitory that served dinners. Every Friday, they served curry and rice.

 The second person was Korean. He was drafted into the army. In the military, they served curry and rice for dinner every Friday.

 I love curry and rice. But I think every week is too much. If you continue to eat the same food every week, you will start to hate it.

 Curry and rice are innocent! The managers in the dormitory and the military need to change the rule!

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Picture by ha-po

 

Tubby Doctor

 

 I undergo a medical checkup once a year.

 For a long time, I had my medical checkups in a small hospital near my home. Why did I choose this hospital? Because the doctor in the hospital was really tubby.

 I know medical checkups are important. But in most cases, doctors blame me by saying things such as “You should quit smoking,” “You have to lose your weight,” and “Do more exercise.”

 Shut up! If I could, I had already done it before you mentioned it.

 But the doctor never said those things because he is tubby. He recommended that I quit smoking, but he added, “You don’t need to hurry.” I liked that hospital.

 Now I take my medical checkups in another hospital because my old buddy started working as a clerk at the hospital. The new doctors also blamed my weight and smoking habit.

Shut up! I come here not for you but for my old buddy!

I miss my tubby doctor.

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Picture by Itagaki Masaya

Green Onion and Dishwashing Liquid

 

 When I was in my twenties, I lived alone. I used to cook by myself.

One problem in single life is wasting food. I bought vegetables but I couldn’t eat them all. I would put them in the refrigerator, but they would easily go bad. I didn’t want to waste food.

 I was most concerned with green onions. I loved miso soup, but it only needed a few pieces of them. I needed to throw away most of them.

 A TV program informed me that if I wanted green onions to last long, I should not keep them in the refrigerator. Instead, I should arrange them in a vase. It would make them live and keep them longer. I started to arrange green onions in my vase.

 Another TV program told me other information. If you want to keep the flowers long, you should add dishwashing liquid to the water in the vase.

I adopted both ideas. I kept my green onions in my vase. In the vase, there was dishwashing liquid mixed with water. I believed I could keep my green onions very long.

Then dinnertime came. I made miso soup. I pulled a green onion from the vase. I chopped it and put it in the pan. It caused a surprising phenomenon. My miso soup made tons of bubbles. They overflowed from the pan.

It was natural. Mixing dishwashing liquid in water is for ornamental plants, not for food. The green onions contained dishwashing liquid. If you boiled it, it would make many bubbles.

I didn’t want to waste my miso soup, so I ate it. It tasted like dishwashing liquid. More precisely, the taste was artificially bitter. I don’t recommend it. It made me sick.

I always made these kinds of mistakes when I was in my twenties.

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Picture by Paprika

Secret Place

 

 

 My grand-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, didn’t have a child. She lived alone. She had Alzheimer’s disease. I commuted to her house to care for her every week.

 Taking care of an aged relative is natural. I started it easily. But I faced a difficult problem. She started to have problems managing money. Who should manage her money?

 I really didn’t want to do it. Finally, I started to do it. I am a relative but a distant one. I needed to manage her money very carefully. Because some other relatives could blame me after she passes. When I visited her, I checked her wallet and carefully recorded how much she had. If she didn’t enough money, I added. She should keep some money at her home. I wrote down the date and how much money she had.

 First of all, I needed the courage to ask her how much she had and in which bank.

“Please let me see your bankbook.”

 This sentence is difficult to say to anyone.

 Fortunately, I commuted to her house for several months. She trusted me, and she taught me the place where she kept the bankbook.

 When I found out where she hid her bankbook, I was surprised. It looked like ordinary furniture, but an unassuming part of it opened unexpectedly. There was a small space to hide bankbooks and stamps. In Japan, you need a stamp to withdraw money from a bank, so the stamp is also important. That place was opened without a key, but no one can find it without being informed beforehand. Where did she buy the furniture? How did they sell it to her? They can’t tell the secret in their advertisement.

 If I hadn’t asked her about the bankbook, she might have forgotten the secret. In that case, I would need to take care of her without money. The bankbook and the stamp might be dumped with no one realizing it.

 But Grand-aunt! Surely you had a nice place to hide important things. But you should not hide the bankbook and the stamp in the same place! Japanese insurance companies would never compensate for theft if someone kept a bankbook and stamp in the same location!

 Where should we hide our important items? All of us will get older and die. To whom should we tell the secret? This is a difficult problem.

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Picture by Shintako

Driving school for the aged

 

 It is a serious problem. Old people cause traffic accidents.

 In Japan, people over 70 years old who have driver’s licenses need to attend elderly training. I am not 70 years old, but I have already taken elderly training twice. I took them with my parents.

 My mother did not drive a car, but she had a license. I did not plan to renew her license because she had Alzheimer’s disease. I was personally interested in the elderly training system. At the beginning of the training, the trainer showed 10 pictures. Then he let the people memorize those pictures. They had to write them down on their papers without seeing the pictures. This was a test for Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, my mother could never remember even one of the pictures. The results of the other tests were worse.

 I assumed the trainer would take away her license, but they simply recommended that she go to a hospital. She already commuted to a hospital. So nothing had happened.

 My father’s case was a little bit different. While I was waiting for the training in the room, a trainer said, “We can’t accept any attendant in this training.” Then he let me out of the room. So I waited outside. Ten minutes later, the trainer came out from the room and asked me. “Your father is angry for some reason. Please handle it.” I entered the room. It was the middle of the 10-picture memorization test. My father was hard of hearing; he could not hear what the trainer said, and he did not know what he should write down. I knew the test very well because I already took it with my mother. So I explained what he should do with a loud voice. Talking to a person who is hard of hearing requires some training. My father’s results were also bad, but they could not take his license away. Nothing happened.

 My father passed away when he was 80 years old. He kept on driving until two days before he died. He caused many small accidents. The doctors, policemen, and our family all tried to stop him from driving. He refused. He died of a heart attack. When I found out he passed away, I breathed a sigh of relief that he finally will not cause serious accidents.

 We really need self-driving cars.

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Picture by Asa

 

 

Abdominal vocalization

 

　My father was hard of hearing. He started to wear a hearing aid when he was in his forties. Without the hearing aid, he could not talk to anyone except me. I could talk with my father without the help of the hearing aid because I was a member of my high school drama club.

 In most cases, if you join a Japanese drama club, you will be taught abdominal vocalization, a technique of making loud sounds using your abdominals. High school drama clubs basically perform in big gymnasiums. We needed this technique to convey lines to the audience. This is not so difficult. A sophomore could teach a freshman.

 This technique was useful to me as a caregiver for my father.

 Ironically, this technique is not so important at other theatrical stages. In a minitheater, it even disturbs one’s performance. It is too loud. In most big theaters, they use wireless microphones. Furthermore, this technique tends to reduce the uniqueness of an actor’s voice. Uniqueness of voice includes how to breathe.

 So abdominal vocalization is useless. But when you talk to a person who is hard of hearing, it is extremely useful.

 One day, my father and I visited a hospital to meet a doctor. I repeated what the doctor said to my father with a loud voice. The doctor heard our conversation. He tried to talk loudly like I did. Abdominal vocalization is not a difficult technique, but it is also not something you can do immediately. The doctor choked while talking. I figured abdominal vocalization was a fundamental technique. At least, it seems doctors do not study this technique in medical schools.

 We should study as many skills as possible. A skill could be useful in some unexpected situations. 

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Picture by koriko

Curtain

 

 

              When I lived with my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, I served her dinner at 6:00 p.m. In the winter, it was dark. I had to close the curtains, but I intentionally opened the curtains and helped my mother eat because I wanted to avoid abusing my mother.

              Caregivers tend to abuse patients who have Alzheimer’s disease, especially at home. In most cases, their sons do. Blaming the sons is easy, but I really understand why they do it. Men in my generation don’t expect to be caregivers at home and at school. Generally, they are not good at caregiving. The period when parents need caregiving usually overlaps with the period when their son is at his most blessed.

              Also, Alzheimer’s patients often disturb their caregivers’ sleep. The lack of sleep causes mental and physical disorders. I always thought, This is not my life. I was not raised so nicely by my mother that I need to do this. I was always worried that I could start abusing my mother.

              This was why I took care of my mother with the curtains open. It kept me reasonable. If I abused my mother in this situation, someone might inform the police. I didn’t abuse my mother to protect myself.

              In the end, I never abused my mother. I sent her to a nursery home. It took fourteen years. If a person who is not familiar with Alzheimer’s disease listens to this story, they might feel nothing about it. Not abusing one’s own mother is natural, but I think I made a great achievement.

              In the evening, if you find a house with curtains open, they might have some problems.

Picture by Toranosuke

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