3 January 2003 (29 Tevet 5763)
Since the beginning of this week I am staying at my parents' in the north of Japan to spend my winter vacation. Generally speaking, I meet none of my ex-classmates during my stay here, but this time I had a precious opportunity to meet many of them in a class reunion that was held this week. In addition to five of our ex-teachers, 30 ex-classmates turned up out of 49 with whom I had spent the first ten years of my formal education from kindergarten through the 9th grade in my hometown. As the last class reunion was held eight years ago, and I had seen none of them since then, I was curious to see what such a long span would be able to do to them physically, spiritually and intellectually.
As I had expected (or feared), the most conspicuous change I immediately noticed was the physical one, especially among married women, while among men, whether married and unmarried, and unmarried women the physical change was not so drastic. This must be because many married women have borne two or three children by the time they reach the age of 40. A few of them even looked quite worn out physically. But in a sense I may have surprised other ex-classmates most with the external change I had undergone since the last class reunion, i.e., beard and mustache.
Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to discern exactly what kind of spiritual and intellectual changes they had undergone as I tried to speak with as many people as possible, updating each other about our respective social changes since the last reunion or even since high school. I am quite certain, however, that most of them have grown spiritually even without any conscious effort through experiences in life, especially hardships.
On the other hand, I had an impression that many of them had simply stopped making conscious efforts to grow intellectually since the end of their formal education. This may be partly because they are either too satisfied with their present situation or too bothered with worries of life to have enough intellectual aspiration. Another reason must be lack of intellectual stimuli. Now I can see more clearly that life in rural areas in general and in our hometown in particular, where many of my ex-classmates live, is deplorably devoid of intellectual stimuli, compared to life in big cities like Kobe, where I live now, especially after the age of formal education. In spite of the development of the Internet, the surroundings and people we directly interact with still remain quite influencial in stimulating our intellect. I have reconfirmed that for this very reason I prefer living in a big city with a heterogenous population.
10 January 2003 (7 Shvat 5763)
Having spent about ten days with my parents and grandmother in my hometown in Akita, I came back to my apartment in Kobe last evening. It is amazing to find that a mere change of location even inside the same country can totally change how I feel.
In my hometown in general and at my parents' place in particular there are enough things that distract me from doing anything productive. Unfortunately, the area is quite depressing not only physically but also socially. Perhaps as is the case with most small rural areas, the population in my hometown is dwindling. My parents, who were also born and raised there, had more than 100 classmates in the local elementary and junior high schools, while I had only 49. Actually the junior high school I attended was closed a year after we graduated from it for lack of students. More than half of these ex-classmates of mine have moved out of the place. Many of those who still remain there would also do the same if they could make a free choice. The main reason why they are still there is that they feel obliged to care about their aging parents. This social mechanism may contribute to keep the status quo but prevents social mobility and progress. Although my parents have been encouraging me to pursue my own goal without worrying about them, I cannot help feeling guilty for being unable to be with them or at least live in their vicinity.
The dwindling and aging of the population cannot leave even the physical environment unaffected. As there are less and less people, there are less and less public and commercial facilities, and as there are less and less public and commercial facilities, more and more people leave the place in search of a more convenient life. Those who have done so might be feeling as if they had betrayed the place and the people who still remain there. This is what I, at least, feel, and makes me feel uncomfortable while I visit there.
The most decisive factor that makes me think that I would not be able to live there again is lack of tolerance for being different from others. As in many other rural areas, there are all kinds of elaborate and time-honored social pressures there that suppress opinions and behaviors that do not conform to the norms of the place. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to return to such a society once one has seen that a society can be organized otherwise.
17 January 2003 (14 Shvat 5763)
One of the legacies of my ex-girlfriend seems to be the appreciation of hot springs in Japan although she may not be aware of this, nor may she want me to connect us. Since we made a trip to Beppu and Yufuin in Kyushu last March, I have come to take an interest in them, feeling as if an unknown world had been revealed to me, especially because hot springs had been associated somehow with old people in my mind. Although I could not visit anywhere since then, I did not lost my interest in hot springs.
As the temperature is becoming lower and lower, which in my opinion is more appropriate for visiting hot springs, and the two-month spring vacation is around the corner, I suddenly felt like making a trip during this vacation to some hot spring located not far from where I live and started to plan it, alone this time. At the end of last month I made an extensive online search for candidates, reading reviews about them by other visitors, and narrowed my selection to one place.
Curiously enough, it seems that hot springs are associated with her in my subconsciousness, and that part of my subconsciousness which is stimulated easily emerges as a dream. Ever since I started planning my trip to a certain hot spring, she started appearing in my dreams quite frequently although we had neither seen nor spoken with each other for quite a long time.
24 January 2003 (21 Shvat 5763)
The cold I had caught last week forced me to spend most of the last weekend lying in bed in my apartment with no one else. Although I managed to do everything alone and recovered from the cold in several days, I really wished there were someone close beside me, not because I needed their physical help, but because I felt that their physical presense could be the single most effective medicine.
This has lead me associatively to the question of marriage. Of course, it is not that I had a sudden desire to marry the first woman I would see on the street. I have simply started asking myself what has prevented me from making this rather decisive - so it seems at least to me - step called marraige until now. I may hesitate even if I should my ideal woman now (supposing, of course, that such a person exists).
It is true that I was - and still am to a much lesser degree - afraid of being fettered by the presense of someone else with whom I am supposed to share a large part of my life in the same physical milieu. But this is not such a significant factor any more though I am aware that the longer I live alone, the more difficult it will be to adjust myself to living with someone else under the same roof.
What really makes me uneasy seems to be the idea of having children after marriage rather than marriage itself though one can have children without marriage, and marriage does not always lead to having children. I fear that I still have enough self-contradictions and have not reconciled with myself enough to raise my own children. This seems to be too heavy a responsibility for a person like myself who is still struggling to find himself. How can a person who has not a clear chart of his own life prepare a chart of the earliest years of his own children? There were times when I felt that I had found such a clear chart for myself, but now I feel that I am back to the starting point again.
31 January 2003 (28 Shvat 5763)
As the idea of visiting a spa started to haunt me, preventing me from thinking about other things, and as the spring vacation started, though partly, this week, I decided to put the plan into practice. Spending about three hours one way from Kobe by limited express, I made a one-day trip alone to Kinosaki this Tuesday.
Although it is considered to be one of the most popular spas in the Kansai area, and I read only favorable, sometimes even enthusiastic, comments about it by other visitors, I have to offend lovers of Kinosaki by saying frankly that I was greatly disappointed and even bored with it; I never imagined that it could be even worse than Arima, another "popular" spa in the area, which I visited several years ago with a friend of mine.
It may not be so fair to compare it with a spa like Beppu and expect the same standard in terms of the number and variety of the hot springs that are open to the general public, but I felt how unreliable other people's words could be as a guide to how I would feel about something. What I consider the worst "betrayal" there is that they pump up hot water from the sources and circulate to all the hot springs in the spa, so that it was enough to visit three hot springs. And the streets and houses whose appearance many people characterize as "tasteful" just looked shabby in my eyes. I am amazed that having searched online as much information as possible about this spa, I found no unfavorable comment about it. But I may only be too critical of everything, thus cannot truly enjoy or appreciate anything.
Although this trip has turned out to be a disappointing experience, and I was depressed rather than cheered up as a result, it was an unprecedented one inside Japan in that I planned it on my own initiative and put it into practice alone. Actually, it has stimulate, rather than dimished, my appetite to visit more spas inside Japan, especially those with open-air baths such as Kurokawa in Kyushu.