Gloomy in Spring

   The wind is still cold but the sun is bright, and we sowed potatoes today. My husband has already prepared seedlings .of summer vegetables like peppers and  tomatoes. We had planned a life to enjoy vegetable gardens and traveling around when we retired. But the situation of Japan is getting worse and worse, so we can’t sit quiet with a cup of tea.

   2019 is a year of a fuss for Japan; it’s the year before the Olympics in Tokyo, and the son of the emperor will become a new emperor. Both are not so important for the country, or for us, but the media is making a fuss all over. Thanks to it people pay no interest in what the government does. Prime Minister Abe made many anti-democratic laws and did many wrong things during his reign, and the biggest thing he wants to do is to change the constitution of Japan and make Japan a military nation as before. He is using the Olympics and the emperor to excite the nationalism and forget the nuclear disaster and people’s poverty. Clever Abe and foolish people!

  We also think 2019 a very important year; there are many kinds of local elections in spring and the congress election in summer. The local election has started and I’m worrying and waiting.      

Long Lives Aren't Celebrated

　The cherry blossoms started blooming in Tokyo, TV news said some days ago. Every year people wait the news of cherry blossoms and we often see maps when to bloom. Love Our love for cherry blossoms seems something special. My place is about 700 meters from the sea level, and the cherries bloom very late. Probably we have to wait two more weeks. I really envy the warm districts. But even in my garden spring is coming, and flowers are starting blooming. For more than three months the garden was just brown, but now it’s getting green and yellow of spring flowers.

 April is the time for starting in Japan. Schools, kinder gardens, companies, and everything start their new years in April. Children and young people step into their new lives in spring. Oh, it’s the same for elderly people. They usually retire in this season.

  Japan is facing the super aging now, People usually retire at sixty, but they can get their pension at sixty-five. The government is planning it at 70!  They have to live until then with no income. So many people keep working, but usually very cheep. The pension is decreasing, and the money for social insurance is increasing, and the media says everyday that the increasing old people are the heavy burden to the society, to the young generation. What should we, old generation, do? Long lives are not celebrated.      

   

How Is Bappa Doing Now?

  I was shocked to hear the news of shooting at a mosque in New Zealand. I visited NZ some years ago and felt the diversity there; I heard people are proud of the blood of the native New Zealander, All the children were learning the language of Maori. Of course NZ might not be responsible as the criminal is from Australia. I’m scared of the racism, such a hatred, which is increasing also in Japan.

   Some twenty years ago there were many foreign people who were working in this small town. One of them was a young man from Bangladesh nicknamed Bappa. He was learning Japanese at one of our friends, and so we became friends with this smart and friendly young man. He was intelligent and read an English newspaper .He was the first Muslim I saw and I didn’t know anything about his religion. One day we invited him to the BQ at our place, but there was nothing for him to eat or drink; he didn’t eat pork, didn’t drink alcohol (Pork is cheaper in Japan!)    He said he prayed five times a day, even at work, but he was breaking the rule little by little after he had come to Japan.  I felt sorry not knowing of the people from other culture.

His dream was starting a factory to make shoes from the money he was earning in Japan. Why shoes factory?.  In his country there were many people who walked barefoot and suffered tetanus. Cheap shoes could save their lives, The shoes factory could hire many people and they could support their families and send their children to school. “When more children are educated, they can make their country a better place” he said. I was moved to hear this. How many Japanese children think of their future like that? I invited him to my class and asked him to talk to the students. He was so glad to have a chance to talk at school.

 But one day he was disappeared with other foreign workers, maybe it was because of the fear there might be an investigation of the immigration office. How and where is he now? Does he have a shoes factory?

Japan is ungenerous to the immigrants and refugees but try only to exploit them. But we can learn a lot from the diversity, don’t you think?        

  

Is He a True Friend?

　Asada Jiro, one of the most popular novelists in Japan said last week, ”It’s humiliation to have foreign armed forces in an independent, sovereign country. It’s like asking a neighbor to guard my house.” The audiences laughed.

I think the matter is more serious. The neighbor has always been looking for fights, and caused a lot of fights in the town. Such a neighbor is staying in my house with a knife. I have to doubt the reason of his staying that he is protecting my family. My house is very near to his enemy’s house, so it’s convenient for him to be in my house to watch or attack it. When a fight begins between them, I will be the first to be involved . Even now I cannot refuse his demands; money, food, and everything His knife can attack me anytime. Is he a true friend?

 

My husband found a book titled ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’brien from somewhere in the storeroom we call ‘the library’. It contains short stories about young soldiers in the Vietnam War. They abandoned everything behind and went there. They saw deaths, wounds, darkness, They killed and they were killed. They were destroyed and decayed. How wretched to be soldiers! “ Don’t kill. Don’t be killed.” is a slogan of Mommy’s Organization against wars. I’d like to add, ” Don’t be a soldier”.      

What Shall We Do With KIMONO In The Chest?

Once one of my colleagues from America said he had thought most Japanese people might wear ‘kimono’, the traditional clothes of Japan even today. Women of my mother’s generation wore kimono as their daily dresses. But I have always wore western style clothes since I was a child. Today few people wear kimono except some special people and special occasions like wedding parties or Coming –of –Age-days. Most of the people don’t even know how to wear kimono. Do you feel it’s strange that we don’t know about our own traditional costumes? I myself think so too, but putting kimono on beautifully is really difficult. It takes long to wear kimono. Moreover when we are in kimono, we can’t move or walk easily. I put kimono on once or twice a year, but as soon as I come back home I take off everything and change into a shirt and pants and breath deep.

There has been a custom of wedding since time ago. When the daughter gets married, the bride’s parents prepare a big chest-ful of kimonos for her. So, women of my generation have many kimonos that were not used or will never be used. Sometimes their parents’ and grandparents’. Women often talk about them; what should I do with them? I’ll never wear them, but I can’t throw them away…   

 Some people remake kimonos to the western style clothes these days. I tried to remake my father’s kimono into my dress today. I’m really weak in this kind of work, but anyway I got a strange shaped new dress.