Chip Kamui

... "What do you think will happen if you are hit by an earthquake in the water?"
The teacher at Tokai University asked me. He taught me the answer that all of the body is violently shaken by the water. The reason why I longed for diving was that I was attracted to the teacher's character. I'm never longing for a woman on the other side of the road.

I don't know if it's practical training, but he said that he has caught "wolffish (Anarhichas Orientalis)" in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.
The large one is nearly 130 cm long and weighs 15 kg. It seems to have to be careful because if the hand is bitten, it will be taken away.
And he said, "It's scary because, despite the fish, it blinks." There are no eyelids, but move the eyes a lot, its eyes will be hidden behind the skin and look like blinks.

It seems that Emperor Showa did so, but academic scholars learn everything with their bodies. Naturally, researchers eat also "sea slugs" and "wolffish," which Chinese people do not eat. So, "Wolffish" is the taste of "Pholis Laeta", he said. Anyway, It bothers my understanding further.

It is said that the wolffish was called "Chip Kamui" in the Ainu language, that is, the name of the fish of God. It seems that when caught the wolffish , they devoted some alcohol as an offering and return that fish to the sea.

wolf

A wolf was diving in the sea on a full moon night.
・・・It's not such a story.

That is a story of having caught a "wolffish" in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The wolffish is 1m long. Dark brown white fish. It is a member of the "gunnel" belonging to the "Zoarcoidei".
Mighty teeth in the mouth. Due to its characteristic and terrifying look, it is often bred in aquariums, and contrary to its look, it is mild-mannered and timid. It seems that it sometimes bites.

When I was a high school student, at a ski resort where I was working part-time, I met a teacher (lecturer?) who was a certain Tokai University Shizuoka campus. He seemed to be busy with a part-time job to earn a diving fee for research.
In between the part-time jobs, I learned flag semaphores from him. The flag semaphore indicates the type of Japanese katakana by the movement of both hands, and I became possible to send "A-i-shi-te-ru (I love you)", but unfortunately there was no use for it.

No wonder. For example, if I send a flag semaphore such as "A I Shi Te Ru" to a beautiful lady diver who is seeking SOS by waving her hands on the surface of the sea, she will be enshrined until the last generation.
What's more, in today's world of smartphones, it's faster to throw my smartphone at her while walking across her road and get her attention. ···Hmm?

to be continued tomorrow

a midsummer night's dream...

A man in front of me suddenly beat my face in a crowded salvage ship from Taiwan and I was knocked out.

... This bastard!  Damn it!! !!

I woke up from my burning midnight dream when I barked.

In my dreams, I left Taiwan without seeing teacher Schfen. But why did I have such a strange dream? Because it's a midsummer night that is uneasy sleep?

a midsummer night's dream...

♪ 仲夏夜之梦
(Like melting to the bone ... ♪)

If the woman in Schfen's photo was a teenager in the year of the end of the war, in 1995 she would be in her late 60s and early 70s. She's probably a mediocre grandma and she's having a happy life somewhere in Japan.

I can only imagine the relationship between the woman in her picture and Schfen's father. However, I think that the separation of the two who were torn apart by the times should be painful and sad, with the feeling of tearing a living tree.

再见，今晚我永远不会忘记你们两个

I want to meet Schfen again.

松任谷由実 - 真夏の夜の夢

仲夏夜之梦

In 1945, with the defeat of Japan due to the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, the repatriation of Japanese residents in foreign countries began.
In Taiwan, the Japanese were not harmed or to be anxious, but the core of Taiwan's rule was seized by continental Chinese by Chen Yi's Secretary of State, and they hated the retention of Japanese troops. ..

From December of that year, 160,000 civilian employees and 320,000 civilians, a total of 480,000, began returning to Japan. Japanese expatriates living in various parts of Taiwan were gathered at one of the "centralized camp" of Keelung, Kaohsiung, and Hualien Port, and boarded from these ports.
In just two months of the first return, a total of 212 transport vessels returned nearly 230,000 Japanese.

Perhaps the young woman in yukata in her mono-chrome photo was one of the returning Japanese who expatriated in Taiwan.
Shufen tweeted that she wanted to meet the woman. She wanted to tell the woman in her photo about her father's life, where he has lived with a woman in his heart.

There are quite a few shrines around Ueno, including Ueno Toshogu. Even if the shrine can be identified in the photo, there is no clue to the woman beyond. ..
It's a story like "仲夏夜之梦".

to be continued tomorrow.

First love

In the heavy rain, we hurried to Ueno station for the time being. When we arrived at the station, we looked at each other and laughed unintentionally. Both of us were soaked at the maximum wet. Her black skirt and sandals were soaked. Her pale orange T-shirt sticked to her skin, revealing her underwear lines.

If we were to get on the train while still wet, her body would freeze in the air conditioner inside the car. So we decided to dry our clothes on the bench at the station for a while.

She was a traveler from Taiwan. And she was  an IBM employee, fluent in speaking English. What she told me until her clothes dried on her bench.
It's the story of her deceased father. As she was organizing father's relics, she found an old photo and a letter that was not posted, those were carefully boxed. The letter were written his first love (?), and the sepia black-and-white photograph showed a young woman in a yukata.

The picture she showed me. It may be a festival somewhere shrine. A woman with a hairstyle like Sazae-san in the manga is seen in the crowd in the shrine precincts.  From the clothes of people, the photo was probably taken in Japan after the WWII. It seems not been so long after the end of war.
... It must be my father's first love.
She says.

to be Continued tomorrow.