I am a native Japanese speaker who used to teach Japanese in a university somewhere on this planet. Currently I don't work but stayed in my house in Northern part of JAPAN. I hope that you could enjoy reading my posts and know what life in Japan is like.
I hadn’t written a blog post for three weeks from 4th to 24th this month. During those days, I was making a system of microphone, amplifier, and speaker so that my mother can talk to me from the first floor to the second floor in my house. Making it from the scratch is impossible. I just connected several circuits that were already assembled.
Not only because I was making this, but I had to get rid of weeds and to cultivate the soil in the garden, and I had to bear the severe heat of the level of disaster. These are the reasons why I could not post anything these three weeks.
And I realized that I had lost viewers from the country where my students are. From coming Monday, they are going to the classroom again. But they will not see me there. I am wondering if some of them would remember me, or just forget because I will not be there.
I used only salt for taste, didn’t use any seasoning nor spices. This is the way Japanese grill fishes. We eat grilled fishes with natural taste. And I made notches on the fishes so that gas fire effectively can heat the fish meat.
Severe summer heat continues. Since I don’t have my vehicle, I have to walk to a supermarket. Go-and-back is a little less than two miles. I don’t walk this distance in the middle of the day. So, these days, I go shopping right after my supper in the evening.
Tonight, I found some horse mackerels were remaining in the refrigerated shelf of the supermarket. They were fresh fishes for Sashimi (raw fish). But the time was already past 7:30 p.m. There were not many customers in the store. It was highly likely that no customers would buy them until the closing time at 8:30 p.m. If it’s a small shop, those fishes would turn to be grilled fishes and appear on the shelves next day. But because it’s a supermarket, I thought they would be disposed as a waste after the store closed in one hour. I didn’t want them to be wasted. I bought one package in which two horse mackerels were packed.
When I got to my house, I quickly started processing. Now the main dishes of tomorrow supper have already decided. I hope that storing one day in the refrigerator could make the taste of fish meat better.
Horse Mackerels for Sashimi that I bought TonightHorse Mackerels that I processed at 8:30p.m.
The new semester will commencement next week. But I haven’t prepared for the semester at all, because I had quit the job as a teacher for Japanese language.
I have written nothing on my blog for these three weeks. It’s probably because heat of the summer is very severe and I am exhausted for six years of hard working.
Anyway, soon the students will come back to the campus, although I will not be able to see them.
Amid the heat of 35 Celsius, I walked more than 30 minutes. I had an appointment with a telecommunication company at 10a.m. Like other rural area, the shopping district is always located in remote area from the old town. All the customers are supposed to come by own vehicles to a shopping mall. So, people like me without a car have difficulties to buy a thing or get services which other people can get. I am a minority, and people having a car are majority in this society.
I bought a Samsung’s Galaxy. When I said this on the video call, my older sister seemed to laugh at me. Actually, I don’t understand why she looks down Samsung products. I just bought what a store clerk recommended me and I thought it had enough performance.
Vegetable Rahmen
When I got out of the store, the sunshine had become even stronger such that I could worry about heat stroke and damage on my skin. It would have taken another thirty minutes for way back to the JR station. I walked, but stopped frequently under the shades. I called my mother using the mobile phone that I had just bought, to say I could not get back home by noon. She told me not to hurry to come home, rather, to take a rest somewhere in the town.
So, I got into a Rahmen restaurant near the railway station. And ate “Vegetable Rahmen” of 880JPY there. Other than me, there was an old man in the restaurant, drinking alcohol in the middle of the day. It was around 12:30 on week day. But there were only two customers in the restaurant. I could hear only sound of cooking and voices from TV. It was very quiet. Clearly it showed to me the declining of a local town in Japan.
Today I went to Niigata because I wanted my ID photo. Actually, I had tried to take my photo by myself with my digital camera. But it was so difficult to make my photo a good one with right lighting, straight direction of face, and good color contrast. I wasted more than two hours yesterday and I gave up the idea to take my photo by myself. So today, I went to a photo studio in Niigata. The studio told me to wait for 30 minutes for processing my photo.
The outside, under the summer sunshine, was too hot. But I walked to Bandai area of the downtown Niigata. An idea came to my mind and that was to go to the observatory in the nearby tall building. There is a 20-story building which is also an office of the famous local newspaper company. I remembered that there was an observatory at the top of the building. I thought it was good to kill thirty minutes.
Toki Messe Building Standing by Niigata West Port
There is a tall building in the photo above. That building also has an observatory. I have been there several times. The observatory has a good view from south-west to north. But you cannot get good view from North east to south.
Bandai Bridge on Shinano River and So-called Niigata Island
You see a tall building with sharp triangle roof on top. That building also has an observatory. But the view from there is limited only from north to South. You cannot see the west. That means you cannot enjoy the view of the sea and Sado island on the west. Actually, if you are male, you could see them by going to men’s restroom. I am a man, so I am not sure whether or not female people can see the west through toilet window. If they can’t, I think it is clearly one of sexual discrimination against women because man can get ocean view while women can’t.
Today’s my conclusion is that the best observatory in the downtown Niigata is where I went to today. It is on the 20th floor of the “Mediaship” building in Bandai area. The second best is of Toki Messe. If you want to take a good picture of Shinano River, Toki Messe is better than Mediaship.
Mr. Shinzo Abe was a politician of Japan. And I should say I didn’t like him at all. Anything he did and said was against my belief and political preferences. But I think he should not have died in that way. He was shot dead by a handmade gun about three years ago.
Two weeks ago, I found his photo on an old newspaper dated on July 11, 2019. Since I was going to quit my job and come back Japan, I was cleaning my room. At that time, I had already finished grading my students for the semester and had registered the scores on the university system. In order to leave the residence, I needed to throw many things as much as I could so that I could pack my stuff into two suitcases and one bag.
Old newspaper is sometime useful to wrap a fragile stuff. But there were many newspaper. I just thought throwing them as trash. And then found Mr. Abe’s photo between the pages. At first, I thought I would throw the page with other pages, but I changed my mind. Even though I didn’t like him, I wanted to take his photo back to Japan with me. Just one page of newspaper wouldn’t increase weight of my suitcase; it’s just a few gram. So, I folded the page and put it into one of my suitcases.
Since two suitcases are too heavy to carry by myself from Narita Airport to my house in Niigata, I asked a shipping company “Kuroneko Yamato” to deliver them. I received them three days ago. I opened one, and found Mr. Abe’s photo again.
There is a small field to cultivate vegetables in the back of my house. Since I had been working abroad in these two years, now the field is covered with weeds. I need to pull them out and cultivate soil by my hand in order to plant vegetables in autumn.
Now it’s the end of July, and summer continues in August. When I came back here two days ago, I quickly realized that there had not been rainfall for long. Everything was dried. Probably three weeks or even one month, my area hasn’t got precipitation. Many leaves became yellow, some trees were withered and died.
Another problem is heat. In addition to drying weather, temperature is high in this summer. It gets 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) every day. I don’t think it is good for my health and safety if I work in my field in the middle of scorching heat and under strong sunshine.
So, I got up 4:30 a.m. in this morning, went to my field, pulled weeds, and gave water to trees. When I approached to grape trees and gripped weeds with my hand, I was stung by two bees. I felt sharp pain on my left hand. Luckily enough, my left hand hasn’t got much aching nor red swelling after that.
Anyway, I know I have to work a lot on my field to make it again well managed vegetable field.
These days, many international flights are operated in Haneda Airport. But when it comes to going abroad, I prefer Narita Airport. In my thought, going to a foreign country and getting on an airplane in Narita Airport are connected each other.
Besides, if you choose the Mono-rail for the access to Haneda Airport, you have to endure a fear of “Oh am I going to dive into the sea if the monorail car is derailed?”, before worrying about safety of your flight.
Anyway, every time I go to and arrive at Narita Airport, I use delivery service for my heavy suitcase. This time, they were 24 and 23 kilograms. It was impossible for me to carry them with me from the airport to my home in Niigata. So, I asked Kuroneko Yamato to deliver them. Their counter is located at the north end of the North-wing of the Terminal 1. It was at around 7p.m. 22nd on Tuesday, and today 24th, I got them in my home.
The photo shows two packages of spices. One is chili pepper and the other is cumin seed. The cylindrical one on the left is 1kg of dried Soba noodle. They were in one of my suitcases.
For some reason, I quit my job in a university. I had been a Japanese teacher for six years. The photo is a waiting area in the airport.
This is what I found in the airport.
This is a meal that I ate in the flight for Incheon International Airport. The dressing in the salad was so good. It was like a paste made from fresh basil and olive oil. I would like to make the same kind by myself.
The airplane landed on B-runway, slowly moved a long way to the terminal near A-runway. I wish a short cut from B-runway to Terminal 1. Anyway, the safe landing was the best thing that I should be thankful.
Now I am back in my mother country. Probably the second best thing.
Paying some additional charges for “Keisei Sky Liner”, I got to the JR Ueno station less than an hour. Plus, I could use free Wifi in the trains. In the old times, all the trains bound for north part of Japan departed from this station. Although this entrance looks a little small, actually the JR Ueno station is a big railway hub.
The time was just before midnight. This is the last train of a day. I came back to my hometown in northern part of Japan.
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