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

Taiwan's ghost stories

Taiwan's ghost stories are a little different, even if they are similar to Japan. In Taiwan, July of the lunar calendar is called "Devil Month", and it is said that the spirits of other worlds return to this world. This year is from August 8th. The beginning of the burning-midsummer ...

If you write Shufen in Chinese characters, it will be "淑恵". She wrote so in brilliant characters. ... Thought it was Japanese. Explained in English, that letter of the "淑恵" looks like a weird joke.

That's all for her story. That night I had a dream. Perhaps the story I heard from Schfen remained deep in my heart, and I had a dream like that.

In my dreams, I was on a transport ship for Japan from Taiwan the year after the defeat. The ship will soon depart. The inside of the ship was packed with many repatriations. The smell of heavy oil was so strong that I felt seasick.

During the war, the Japanese in Taiwan generally lived affluently. There was an air raid, but I didn't feel hungry.
Schools in Taiwan continued in the summer of the end of the war. Then, instead of Japanese teachers, teachers from China and Taiwan were appointed, and the lessons focused on the Mandarin language. Of the approximately 100 students in the first grade, 70% were Japanese, but the number of students attending school gradually decreased.

In a dream, the Taiwanese teacher was Shufen for some reason. Her crisp eyes changed her facial expressions from time to time. She was a department store with emotional expressions. At first glance, I fell in love with Schfen.

The day of withdrawal from Taiwan. Teacher Schfen had come to the harbor to see off her students. I squeezed through the crowds of the ship for a glance at my teacher and tried to imprint her in my memory. But I was disturbed by the many people.
The long steam whistle rang and the ship set sail while I was pushing each other on the boat. When I was desperately squeezing the people, I was suddenly beaten by a stranger in front of me and knocked out.

to be continued tomorrow

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.