I used to have terrible period cramps when I was a teenager. When the time of the month approached, I would feel my body starting to bloat. And then I would get the heaviness and gruelling pain in my lower back and abdomen. I would often get anemia and feel so nauseous that I couldn’t …
Sometimes a very trivial thing gets you into never-ending agony of an incomprehensible mystery. It happened to me on a beautiful Sunday afternoon of a beautiful summer day. I was making my favourite type of coffee poured into my favourite mug, listening to my favourite radio station. Then I opened a packet of my favourite …
When I feel “Life is not fair!”, I’m likely to remember my friend, Kaz. Kaz and I were classmates at the third grade in an elementary school. We sat next to each other in the classroom. We also lived near one another, so we sometimes walked back home from school together. I remember him as …
My life was once saved by a stranger. It was a cold night in late winter in the late 2000s. I went out with my friend to Lower Manhattan. Just the two of us emptied two bottles of wine. It was unusual for me to drink that much. I’m not a heavy drinker. But that night …
When I was 22 years old, I was working in a jazz bar. The bar was located in Akasaka, an entertainment area in CBD Tokyo. The owner of the bar was a 60-year-old guy from a wealthy family. He would play piano and drums and sang old jazz classics while I was tending a bar. …
I have once interviewed a well-known novelist. It was back in 2009, when I was studying arts management in New York. The assignment we were given was was to carry out an interview to one of those “movers & shakers” in New York. I was very excited about the task, but I had no idea …
When I was 12 years old, my parents got divorced. I understood their divorce was an inevitable decision. I believed they should not stay together if they were so unhappy with each other. Or, at least that was the logic I adopted in order to cope with the situation. Still, the fact of a disbanding …
A few weeks after the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, mom and I went to a local shopping center. Only a few shops have reopened. We managed to get some groceries from a supermarket where most shelves were empty. Freight transportation and distribution systems still have been mostly suspended. As we walked towards the exit, I …
January 17th, 1995. For those like me, who were living in the Kobe area in 1995, January 17th carries a significant meaning: the day our town was completely devastated by a massive earthquake that became known as the Great Hanshin Earthquake. I was 12 years old at that time. I lived in Nishinomiya, a city …
It has been 8 years since my grandfather passed away. He was nearly 80. I know about his work. I know about his family and social life. But, I hardly know who he really was. My mother’s father, Haruo, was a successful businessman. After returning from a military service for WWII, he started his small …
A Thousand Years 