We have to hurry again. Christmas, or even New Year is pressing on. The time to look back and remember another busy year of ours has once again come around. And this year is something special we can never miss. (Did we say this last year too? Forget it.) You’d have to wait a century and a decade until 2112 should you want to talk about a year that made a numerical palindrome like this. Boy, would we have to live a long life Methuselah would pale before!
Busy busing and biking
“Old habits die hard,” says an English proverb, and, according to a Japanese saying, “You can’t fight the traits that run in your blood.”For Seika, this year was a true watershed, in that he entered elementary school and Mumbo Club after-school care center, made a lot of friends, and, above all the other exciting new challenges, started commuting by bus. Busing expanded his world in the true sense of the word. He got hooked on route buses.All began with his begging to go out with Masami no matter what the destinations were. Wherever he went in his Mom’s Prius, he kept his eyes wide open like big saucers and looked for bus stops on the roadsides. Then he avidly learned how to read the destination signs on the buses he saw come and go; asked how far those places were. One day Hideaki came home with a full-color map from City Hall with the detailed bus routes and stops, and tacked it on the wall of their living room. Seika kept looking at it day in and day out and memorized all the routes and bus stop names, and also all the place names of their surrounding areas. When the summer holiday began, he loudly uttered his wish to visit the bus termini he had seen on the buses or on the map. Beginning with a Jimbei Pump House terminus, he went in a car Hideaki or Masami drove to Yukawa Depot and Tamatsukuri, both Narita New Town’s innermost termini; Sawara, a city two municipalities away; Oomuro, out in Narita backwoods; JR Yachimata Station, three municipalities away; and Tsukiawase, beyond the Tone River and out in adjacent Ibaragi Prefecture. Each time, he got on the bus alone, spent an hour or so in the bus until it took him back to Narita Station Terminal (sometimes making friends with girls who he called “pretty” that happened to get on board midway, and enjoying chatting with them), paid the right amount for a fare, got off and walked back home, all by himself. On the way, he heard the in-car announcement and found out how the mysterious bus stop names he had seen on the map on the living room wall were pronounced. His lectures (including what those bus stops are called) came in order after his adventures. The blood of Masami the globetrotter runs in him.At the beginning of the same summer, Seika mastered riding his bicycle, finally without the training wheels. When Daiei, an ailing big supermarket chain, withdrew from the town next to Narita in late July, Hideaki and Masami found a brand new bicycle on closedown sale. They hesitated a bit, but knowing Seika had been practicing biking on a rusty second-hand bike, they bought it. Seika at first showed only nominal interest in it, but he took his daily trips to and from the house of his friend Nobu on that brand new bicycle the whole summer. Nobu lives only less than fifty yards away.
Busy with balls
Irritated and fed up with the permanently allergy-stricken thus sedentary Hideaki, Masami decided to begin practicing golf and tennis, not with him. She found out a tennis club at the far edge of the New Town and signed up. On Saturdays, when both she and Seika are off, they go together and take separate lessons. At least for now, Seika’s prospect for playing in Wimbledon in the future seems less than slim. The likelihood of Masami’s dream of getting slender legs through exercise to come true seems as slim too. Two nights a week, after eating supper with Seika and Hideaki, she goes alone to a neighborhood driving range and practices. She got a golf bag with Cookie Monster printed on it for a birthday gift from Hideaki. What about the stuff that has to go in it? Which leads us to how Masami makes twofold use of her hubby’s chicken-feed income. Besides tennis and golf ball, she also avidly plays mouse ball, and got the golf clubs she carries in it in a Net auction, at a rock-bottom discount. She’s now a heavy Net auction addict, with her Net-trophies arriving every less than three days. How cheaply she got them, including many daily necessities, is what she proudly brags about of late to anyone every chance she gets.
Busy with the bulletin-board
Hideaki’s 2002 has been as epochal as Seika’s.Until recently, when a question “What is your hobby?” was raised, Hideaki’s immediate answer was, “My wife” period. But this summer, his short list of hobbies was joined by something new. Now he answers, “My wife and the Net BBS.”A web-site All About Japan, the Japanese affiliate of US’s About.com, is run by Masami’s college classmate and About’s editor in chief Sayuri Sacchie Morikawa, and through that connection, he came to know about its BBS in early spring. Once he began posting in summer, he got hooked. Ordinarily he goes to bed at 9:30, even earlier than Seika, but after he got addicted, he sometimes stays up until 11 p.m. writing his messages, at times in English at one of his opponents’ urge, and gets up at 5:10 to see if there is any reply. He mainly discusses the deplorable English education situation in Japan. He castigates many lax English teachers who lack even the basic speaking command of the very language they daily teach. This has turned out to be fairly controversial. He’s made many foes on the BBS, but also found a few soul mates never to be found in his own workplace.Teacher of English, he has been applying himself to the TOEIC English proficiency test. He started off with the score of 920 out of 990 in 1992, got a nearly perfect 975 in 2000, and this year finally grabbed the perfect 990 in May 2002. Now he stands atop all the other 79 thousand applicants throughout the world.
Vertiego in San Diego
San Diego. The sound of it rings to Masami like a place of pilgrimage long longed for. One year after the confounded terrorists and Seika’s fevers ruined her plans to visit San Diego, she stood up to take twofold revenge or more. You know who she is. This year, she would conquer the South Californian port resort at long last. Swimming in a plush-hotel pool, visiting theme parks, and aquariums, even shopping around for a house to live after Hideaki’s retirement were already on her itinerary last year. The peak attraction was San Diego Zoo. All the three of them were just astounded by its vastness. After strolling under the punishing sun, resting in the tree shades and being overjoyed with a big serving of ice cream, Seika resumed walking and found himself at the end of a long line that led to the panda house. Seeing people remain orderly and none breaking into the line, Hideaki couldn’t help asking Masami beside him, “Why is it called pandamonium?” And then the aerial ropeway. Hung more than 200 feet high mid-air above the zoo ground and able to see for miles around, Masami kept screaming all the way. Hence the title.
We wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Love, Hideaki, Masami and Seika
