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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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Just clearing your eyes, my father was anattentive father. He treated me so nicelythroughout my childhood.
My mother didn't like how he treated me becauseshe believed he was just spoiling me.
Every time he did a nice thing to me, she gotangry. To avoid her anger, he had learned to giveme a treat without her presence.
Near my home was a temple famous for the five-storied pagoda, and a fair was held along the approachto it once a month.
A relative of ours had a booth at the fair, and myfather helped carry merchandise every month.
He never forgot to get some toys for me there whenhis work was done.
There was no greater pleasure for me than seeinghim entering the house, waving some playhouseitems to me.
Of course he was scolded by my mother when shecaught it.
I usually slept beside my grandparents, and I hadsuffered from chronic insomnia in my childhood.
Once in a while, I had a happy occasion to sleepwith my parents when my grandparents were on theirtrip.
On one of those occasions, my mother was taking abath when my father came to a futon next to me.
Since my parents didn't know about my insomnia, hewas surprised I was still awake.
He thought I couldn't sleep because I was toohungry.
Not to be caught by my mother, he stealthily gotout of the room, sneaked into the kitchen, made arice bowl, and brought it to me.
He told me to finish it before my mother came outof the bathroom.
Seeing me devouring it, he said that he had nevermade a rice bowl by himself before and didn't knowhow.
It was surely the ugliest rice bowl but the mostdelicious one I had ever had.
My mother also didn't like to see me cry.
She had told me not to cry because crying made melook like an idiot.
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While my little sister cried all the time, I triednot to as hard as I could.
But as a small child, I sometimes couldn't help itand my mother would get angry with me for crying.
In those cases, my father always said to me,
You're not crying, are you? You're just clearingyour eyes, right?
I hadn't noticed until recently that there are theexact words in my song Sunrise.
I've put his words unconsciously.
P.O.W.
Once, on the festival for the local shrine of myhometown, my favorite grandfather on my mother'sside and I were talking alone at the front yard ofmy house.
He knew a lot about plants and taught me the namesof trees in the yard.
There was a rooftop space above the garage and Iwas surrounded by a fence.
We went up the rooftop and my grandfather began toclimb the fence.
I tried to stop him but he said he could walkalong the top of the fence.
He was a war veteran and had been a P.O.W. inRussia for many years.
In those days, according to him, Russian soldiersmade P.O.W.s climb up tall chimneys and shot themfrom the ground for fun.
His fellow P.O.W.s fell or got shot to death.
Luckier men continued to climb up and survived.
My grandfather was one of the latter.
Although he was old and a little drunk after thefestival meal, he balanced himself and walked onthe narrow fence which was merely 4 inches wideand 13 feet above the ground.
Watching him easily walking on the fence, Iunderstood how dreadful his life as a P.O.W. was.
This must be a cinch for him compared to forced acrobatics.
He jumped off the fence and said smiling,
See, it's easy, while I was crying for manyreasons, a prodigy.
My great-grandmother was a geisha.
She grew up in a remote village surrounded by themountains and left home for a big city to become ageisha.
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She had a daughter by a patron and died rightafter she gave birth.
The daughter was my grandmother on my mother'sside.
She didn't remember her mother at all and didn'tknow her father either.
No one still knows who her father is except thathe was a rich and powerful name.
She was taken in and raised by her mother'sparents at their home in the mountains, but forvarious reasons, she was soon handed over to onerelative to another.
She lived in countless different homes of herrelatives and changed her school for innumerabletimes in her childhood.
At every school she attended, she was the smartesthonor student and had never dropped to second.
One of her relatives' homes where she lived for awhile was my grandfather's.
Years after she left, he told his parents that hewanted to marry her.
She got married with him at the age of 16 andmoved in his house again as his wife.
She settled down and got her family at long last.
But only five years later, my grandfather wasdrafted for World War II and she was left with hertwo daughters, one of which is my mother, and herin-laws.
A former prodigy with no home and no parents foundherself working hard as a farmer every day in thefields with her in-laws.
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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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