00:03
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I wrote about another game at my family casino.
The living room in my grandparents' home was usedfor a card game when the house turned into afamily casino during New Years.
The game was a blackjack like one called Kabu andorganized by my uncle.
It used to be the best treat of New Years for mein my childhood and early in my teens.
Unlike Mortar Roller I had introduced before, thisgame was played seriously and intensely because itwas for high stakes.
The players usually bet a dollar or more,sometimes as high as a hundred dollars.
The farther into the night it got, the higher thebet went.
The family members would leave the table one byone, as the higher bet would make them tense anddeprive them of pleasure.
As for me, I liked to see the game get heated somuch and would play throughout the night until thegame came to an end in the next morning.
The usual players who stayed at the table neardawn would be my uncle who was a dealer, my eldestcousin, my mother and I.
My uncle was a successor of the family by marriageand so my grandparents were his in-laws.
He was on terrible terms with my grandmother whoraised my eldest cousin in place of him
and his wife because they were too busy working atthe family farm.
Consequently, he didn't get along well with hisown son either.
New Years Kabu would become an intense battlebetween my uncle and my cousin by dawn.
My uncle couldn't lose especially to his son andthat made the game extraordinarily thrilling.
My cousin would bet more than $10 on each deal andmy heart would be pounding by seeing bills on thetable.
My uncle would concentrate on the cards dealt tohim and his son too deeply to care about my smallbets.
Because he would forget to count me in and settlemy deal thoughtlessly each time,
I would end up winning quite a big amount of moneyin total every year.
He would summon all his strength when he saw thelast card dealt to him.
In spite of his prayer-like chants come on!
Come on, most of the time the card would be theleast one he had wanted.
Hand after hand, he drew the worst card possiblewhile my cousin was rolling on the tatami floor tostifle his giggling.
As far as I remember, he had never won against mycousin.
He was manly and frank, but I can still picturehim going back to his room after the game in themorning light with unsteady steps, worn out, drooping, and on the verge of tears.
Three months after the house was burned down, hedied of cancer without becoming the head of thefamily.
03:04
Audiobook, Japanese Dream by Hitomi Woods on saleat online stores or apps.
Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks, 43available distributors in total.
I wrote about a battle between Sister Carmella,me, and my mother.
Back in my Catholic school days, a teacher forHome Economics was Sister Carmella.
I was in her cooking class.
I had no interest in cooking at all and all I didduring the class was giggling with my friends andwashing the dishes.
I simply couldn't take anything in the classseriously.
Homemaking seemed ridiculous to me, and to beginwith, I could laugh endlessly when I thought abouta sister called Carmella teaching how to makecaramel.
As I was lazy all the time chatting and giggling,Sister Carmella often had to call my name in frontof the class and shush me.
She also noticed I hadn't participated in anycooking but just been doing the dishes.
No matter how hard and often she scolded me for mybad attitude, I didn't obey and kept making otherstudents laugh.
Her patience snapped at last and she called mebefore the principal.
In my school, bad students were close to zero anda student was hardly ever called to the principal's office.
The principal was Sister Mary Catherine whoreasonably believed I had done somethingextraordinarily wrong.
But she was taken aback when Sister Carmella toldher that I had fooled around during the class.
She looked at her face with an impression of that's it?
After mildly telling me to behave myself, she letme go.
Sister Carmella's punishment didn't work and mybad behavior continued.
I was in her sewing class next year.
Again, I slacked and asked my friend to make askirt for me.
Sister Carmella found that out when I turned inthe skirt pretending I had sewn it.
That snapped her completely.
She decided to appeal directly to my parents andcalled up my mother that evening.
Over the phone, she told her at length how bad Ihad been in her class.
She blamed my bad attitude on my mother's lack ofdiscipline.
My mother kept apologizing for a long time, buther tone gradually changed.
As Sister Carmella strongly criticized my mother'sway of raising a child,
my mother suddenly yelled,
I have no reason to listen to someone who hasnever married nor had a child.
And hung up violently.
I was stunned because it sounded to me the mostinsulting remark about a sister.
She said to me, who does she think she is?
She has never raised a child herself, and yetlooks down on me who did raise a child.
You don't have to obey such a stuck-up person.
And Sister Carmella stopped complaining about mybehavior ever since.
It's about my sudden desire to become a nun when Iwas a teenager.
06:23
The Catholic school I attended had an annual eventof a movie viewing.
One year, the school selected a movie about JesusChrist's life,
In the final scene, Jesus looked straight at me,
which I mean was straight at the camera, and said,I am with you always.
That line startled me.
For the first time, I realized he was always withme and I was touched by the thought.
Tears were rolling down my cheeks.
I had a hard time to see the stares on my way outof the movie theater because of my tears
and to hide them from my friends at the same time.
I had been exposed to the Christian teachingsroutinely through a Bible class
and a daily morning prayer at school.
Yet, I had never thought about it deeply like thisbefore.
As a teenager, I had believed that nothing goodwould ever happen to me in the future
and I would have to endure a life in the prison-like world.
I had constantly felt lonely and hopeless.
But what if Jesus was always beside me?
I wondered how helpful it would be.
Although I had had numerous bad incidents with nuns at school
and been unable to get along well with them,
I felt like I understood a fraction of the reasonwhy they became nuns.
Imagining being a nun can be much closer to Jesus,
I suddenly wanted to be one.
I talked about it casually to my best friend
and she burst into laughter as she thought it wasmy new joke.
I had told her seriously for days but that waseven funnier to her.
My decision to be a nun hadn't changed after oneweek
and at last I dared to tell my mother about it.
She just flatly said,
You're too curious and tempting about sexualmatters to be a nun.
Her remark was right enough for me to come to mysenses and think better of it.
Audiobook, Japanese Dream by Hitomi Woods on saleat online stores or apps.
Apple, Audible, Google Play, Nook Audiobooks, 43available distributors in total.
Inside a cabinet in the old house where I grew upand spent much of my childhood,
there was a beautiful music box.
It stood out by its glamour and westernized style
among other articles of Japanese folk art in thecabinet.
My mother took it out once or twice a year for me,
solemnly and carefully as a special occasion.
She would wind up,
open the lid slowly and let me listen to itsheavenly melody.
It was the first gift she received from my fatherwhen they were young.
The tune was True Amorai by Schumann.
I asked my father what the title meant
and he told me it meant rosy happiness
although I later learned it actually meantdreaming.
I imagined that he felt rosy happiness when he wasmarrying her.
09:00
Since the music box was expensive,
my mother strictly forbade me to touch it.
I wasn't allowed to play it on my own.
My parents were usually out for work
and I was suffering from auto-intoxication when Iwas little.
I often fainted while I was playing alone at home
and my grandmother had to call a doctor each time.
In those days,
my secret remedy was sneak open the cabinet
and take out the music box.
While my mother believed it was a once or twice ayear occasion,
I listened to it almost every day.
Although by then I had already known
that my parents got married by an arrangedmarriage
for each family's convenience
and my mother especially married money,
it helped me delude myself
that my parents loved each other.
By listening to the tune,
I felt hopeful and had fewer blackouts
from auto-intoxication.
When I lived in the city before moving in here,
I had an idea that I would play true MRI on thepiano
for my parents on their wedding anniversary.
I practiced playing it by listening to a SchumannCD.
But my rare respectable attempt
never materialized after all for a strange reason.
Every time I practiced true MRI,
a cockroach appeared from somewhere as if it was acue.
It was impossible to continue practicing
because I have a strong phobia about roaches.
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