00:04
英語聞き流し10分間名作リスニング。英語テキストとMP3ダウンロード、その他の物語はホームページよりご利用いただけます。
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I happen to find a conveyor belt sushi restaurantin the city where I often go shopping. For thosewho aren't familiar with it, let me explain whatit is.
Conveyor belt sushi is a self-service system toserve sushi on a narrow conveyor that winds aroundthe restaurant.
Sushi is put on a small plate by two pieces, or byone piece for an expensive kind, and those platesare continuously moving on the conveyor.
Tables are set along the conveyor and a customergrabs a desired plate when it passes by.
Usually it costs $1 per plate and a customer paysaccording to the number of their empty plates. Teaand condiments are free.
I hadn't eaten at a conveyor belt sushi restaurantfor years and during my absence, it has maderemarkable progress.
The place I got in was one of the major chains andhad a state-of-the-art system.
For a customer who wanted to order a kind otherthan what were going around on the conveyor, therewas a touchscreen display above each table.
It showed a huge variety of sushi and all I had todo to place an order was just select and touch.
An additional, express conveyor was running abovethe normal conveyor and the plates of my orderwere riding on a miniature bullet train.
The train appeared from the kitchen, running faston the additional conveyor, and stopped at mytable.
After I picked up the plates from the bullet trainand touched OK on the display, the train went backin the kitchen.
I had never seen anything like that.
The place fascinated me entirely.
It was spacious and clean with a modern, westernized atmosphere, western background music, and abooth.
Eating was done without seeing people workingthere except when I entered and when I paid.
That I didn't have to watch a hard-headed sushichef was so comfortable and felt free.
And the variety on their menu was amazing.
In addition to popular kinds of sushi, they hadthe original sushi like roast pork, duck pastrami,hamburger steak, and so on.
It wasn't just sushi coming on a conveyor.
They had different kinds of miso soup, tempura,fried chicken and desserts.
Above all, almost every plate was only $1 so thatI had as much sushi as I could eat.
It was so exciting to spot my favorite kind on theconveyor and see its plate moving toward my tablefrom the far end.
It's also thrilling to see if other customer mightpick it up before me.
The bullet train was extreme fun.
I enjoyed even watching a carrier their table'sorder and passing through my table with a smallwool sound.
I touched checkout on the screen display when Ifinished eating.
03:01
A server came to my table and counted the emptyplate I stacked up high.
I received the bill and paid at the cashier.
They didn't take a credit card and accepted cashonly.
The payment method was terribly low tech somehow.
While I wish to eat there as often as I can,
my partner said he couldn't because he felt dizzyas he watched so many sushi plates coming andgoing around him.
Moving to a new place reminds me about the timewhen I first left home.
I had always longed to live in Tokyo sincechildhood,
watching modern high-rises or cool apartments inTV dramas.
I knew that would never happen to me because I wasa firstborn and a family succeeded from generationto generation
and was destined to finish my life in the countryfamily house.
But music provoked me to throw away everything myfamily, friends, college life and, above all,secure life and to move to Tokyo.
As almost all Japanese record companies were inTokyo and there were many musicians as well,
I thought it would be easy to promote my music andfind good band members.
In actual fact, I only found bad musicians in anunsightly city with too many people,
and the record companies picked trashy songs byignoring mine.
Except that I was so happy to have left the placewhere I was born,
things in Tokyo weren't as good as I had expected.
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The high school I attended held a mandatory summercamp when I was a freshman.
The students chose activities such as swimming,hiking, cycling and so on beforehand.
To spend the time in the camp together, my groupof close friends at school decided to choose thesame activities.
We considered carefully which ones were theeasiest and mildest, and chose archery andcycling.
A couple of months later the cycling day in thecamp arrived.
We set off on each rental bicycle.
Right after that, one of my friends, called Yone,fell.
She quickly got back on her bike and we startedagain.
Immediately, she fell again.
We stopped to wait for her.
She caught up with us by pushing her bike andsaid,
Sorry. Now let's go.
06:02
But the same thing was repeated for the thirdtime, her falling down, us waiting.
We finally asked her what was going on and heardher astonishing confession.
She said, I can't ride a bike.
We gaped.
Being unable to ride a bike was nothing, but whydid she choose cycling among all activities then?
And telling us now?
We pressed her for an explanation why she didn'tjust say so when we decided on cycling.
She told us that she couldn't because we were joyfully talking about how easy cycling would be.
In our group, she was the tenderest one, but alsoa pushover.
She always had no opinion of her own and conformedto others.
That was a given, but I never thought this much.
We were talking about pushing our bikes and goingall the way on foot with her when she said,
I'm ruining your plan for an easy activity.
I can't make you walk all the way because of me.
Please ride on.
I think I can manage along the way.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
We mounted on the bike, not pedaling but walkingwhile Yone kept falling and saying sorry for amillion times.
Her indecisive, weak-minded attitude has graduallygotten on my nerves.
A girl of other group whom I had barely talkedbefore pedaled back toward us.
She had something to ask me.
I answered and chatted, and we hit it offinstantly.
When I realized, I pedaled with her separatingfrom my group.
I stopped a weight at the foot of the downwardslope and heard a scream.
It was Yone flying down the slope on her bike andtumbling into a rice paddy.
Other friends were chasing her and pulled her andher bike out of the rice paddy.
Covered with mud, she was saying sorry again andagain.
As a thoughtless teenager, I pedaled away with mynew friend.
When I thought about Yone again some miles away,the chain on my new friend's bike suddenlysnapped.
While we were struggling to fix it covered withgrease, Yone and other friends of my group caughtup with us.
By then, Yone was all over scrapes and mud like acartoon.
We ended up pushing a bike and walking together.
A teacher came to us from the goal and reprimandedus, as we were incredibly late.
On the bus heading home, my friends blamed me forbeing so cold-hearted that I had deserted Yone.
But Mudcake Yone herself didn't blame me but keptapologizing to me instead.
I found out that there was a downtown area in theregion of my new place and went to look around.
It was a 20-minute train ride from my apartment.
According to an online map, a shopping mallbuilding was right next to the train station, butfurther information wasn't available anywhere onthe internet.
09:04
When I actually got off the train and stood at thestation, my jaw dropped.
A shopping space that had been called a mall onthe map was a one-story shabby building with fewstores.
It was like a swap meet, rather than a mall.
The main street in front of the station seemed tobe caught in a time warp.
I felt back in time walking through the old, forlorn shops.
Murmuring downtown? Can't be.
I decided to try another shopping mall about amile off.
After I walked for 25 minutes through rice paddiesand vacant lots, a huge suburban shopping centerappeared.
It was what we call the mall.
I felt greatly relieved that I found a place toshop for my life in a new town.
The shopping center had the free shuttle from thestation.
My long walk was totally lost labor.
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英語聞き流し10分間、名作リスニング、英語テキストとMP3ダウンロード、その他の物語はホームページよりご利用いただけます。
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