A Little Complaint

　　　Prime Minister Abe chose his new cabinet members.  Among twenty members, there is only one woman. Abe once said, “ I would make Japan a society where every woman can shine.” and chose five women as his cabinet members. I don’t think every woman is good as a leader, but many of Abe’s words are lies, or just to win public favor.

     Not only in the cabinet, but in most scenes in Japan we see the same kind of things. How many women are biting their lips as they have to confront the sexual prejudice and discrimination. In Japan, the glass ceiling is low and thick even now .

   

    The rice fields turned yellow, and I saw many people harvesting these days. It is a happy and beautiful season. My husband grows most of the vegetable my family need, but we don’t grow the most important food, rice, and it’s a little pity for me. Actually my family has a rice field enough to feed us, but it was too difficult for us to take care of the field when we were working fulltime. In many families young generations are too busy or are living in the cities leaving their parents and their rice field in the country.     A

Weekend With a Typhoon

　　Typhoon No. 24 is coming, It’s very big and strong, You have to be ready and careful, TV is saying. We have had too many typhoons this year, and we had too many rainy days in this month. I don’t hate rainy days; I don’t have to work outside and so I can read books or watch movies. But too many!

    Today, cold rain was falling all day long again but I had no interesting book to read, no interesting movies to watch. So I cleaned the rooms (I don’t like cleaning!), made some cards of Korean sentences, read some pages of German textbook, but they were all boring. So I went shopping and I found so many people like me in the mall. I bought a bag I don’t need at the bargain basement (How stupid!), and food including a lot of snacks. This is the reason I should not go to a mall.

     The typhoon is coming near tomorrow and the baseball match of my grandson’s will be postponed. I’m going to the library and find some books to read.

      　

     It’s 9:50 in the evening of Sunday. I can hear the sound of heavy rain outside. It’s scary. We put the flashlights  and a radio on the table. Can we go to bed tonight?

 

    A  great news!!  The election for the governor of Okinawa was held today, and Mr. Tamaki won!!  The government of Japan had tried to crash the people of Okinawa who don’t obey it. The government and the LDP used all their power, money, and the media. But the people of Okinawa chose the peace, not money,  

Why D I Learn Korean?

　　I am learning the Korean language from a Korean woman who married a Japanese for some years. I’m a bad student and I can speak it only a little, but anyway I attend the class once a month.

    There are many Japanese who learn English or want to speak English, but I don’t know many who learn Korean or speak Korean. Why?

    Japan tried to invade and rule Korea many times. About 90 years ago, we, Japan made the country our colony, a part of Japan. People were forced to speak Japanese language and change their names to Japanese ones. During those days Japanese people learned to discriminate them, I suppose, while Japan had learned a lot through Korea and we have so much relation with the people on the peninsula since long, long time ago. And now again there are many Japanese who hate Korea believing wrong information, even though their root might be in Korea. Many of Japanese don’t value Korean culture except fans of Korean TV show, I feel.

    I was born in Korea when it was Japan’s colony, and I have felt guilty to the country.  When I first stop at Kimpo Airport in Korea about fifteen years ago, a young Korean lady explained about Korean culture with perfect Japanese. It was a kind of shock. I was feeling guilty, I said, but I knew nothing about their culture even one word. Did the lady know the history between two countries? Why did she learn Japanese? I felt I should pay respect to Korea and its culture. Then I found a place to learn the language.

Abe Is Not Your Friend, Don't You Know?

　After the long harsh summer, autumn has come at last. Here in the highland, chilly air in the morning makes us know that summer has gone. We enjoy the clear blue sky and crisp air, but sometimes autumn brings long cold rain.

  These years our land was attacked by natural disasters again and again. The last one was the earthquake in Hokkaido on September 6^th.  When I first watched TV, I couldn’t understand what had happened; green of wood should have covered the scene, but there were a lot of brown patches all over; many hills and mountains crushed or slid down into villages and rice fields. In Hokkaido it is getting colder faster, and people must have troubles, I suppose. How are they doing?  Before forgetting the former one, we suffer the next natural disaster these years. What a place we are living in!

 

  We are having even bigger disaster now.  Shinzo Abe has started his third reign. There was an election among the LDP, and they voted for Abe. We have a small constituency system, and the LDP has more than half seats though they get only 30% votes. The top of the biggest party becomes the top of Japan.  So Abe is our prime minister for the third times. We have no right to choose the leader of the country, and have to accept the result of the strange election.

Abe is just a spoiled and stupid boy who has never contemplated things deep and sincere, has never think of weak ones or poor ones, but after a pretty long reign he is now worse, arrogant and dictatorial. And the ones who voted for the LDP are us, anyway.

Right wing seems to have more power, and they support Abe. What kind of people are they? When we were standing by the street and hold placards, a car ran in front of us shouting something a few times. One day the man in the car came to us trying to take photos of us. His car was a small and shabby one, and his clothes didn’t seem expensive. Clearly he was not a rich and successful person in this competitive society.  I thought, “You should have a bigger and gorgeous car when you support Abe. Do you know he is not interested in you. He works only for the rich and power or his friends.”

Like in the other countries, the people who support nationalism and the right wing and hate different people are not happy enough themselves. They feel stronger and safer when they are in the ally of the power, don’t they?   

Living in a Countryside

　　I live in Nagano Prefecture. Japan is an island country, but Nagano has no waterfront and is surrounded with mountains. Most people have lived farming on small lands or working at small factories.

   But young people who finished schools move to big cities to get jobs and to enjoy more convenient lives. Many of them settle there. So, Tokyo is getting bigger and bigger, on the other hand, small villages and towns far from big cities have only old people. Their population is decreasing. We see a lot of abandoned places that were once rice fields. Our neighbor’s rice field next to our vegetable garden is now covered with tall ugly weeds.

Everyone is worrying about the future of our community; no young people, abandoned houses, fields with no people to farm…... Only huge cities are prosperous.

When I first came here to live, I didn’t like this place; no shopping malls, no concert halls, not many sophisticated people, harsh winter, nothing interesting, nothing exciting.…  But now I feel I’m lucky to live here; we live in a pretty large house though very old, grow enough vegetables without chemicals to feed my family on the inherited land, I also enjoy gardening( too big for me to weed). I don’t need much now, so I don’t have to go shopping often. Many People are not very intelligent, but they know a lot about cooking and farming.

This kind of idea might come to me because I got old. While I was busy working hard, gardens or nature meant nothing. I understand the people who need to be in big towns

But recently some young people come to live in this town. They seem to know what I didn’t know until late of my life.