Category Archives: A day in my life

“Hang in there”

One of my least favourite Japanese expressions is “がんばれ (gambare)”. Typical Japanese-English dictionaries say it means “hang in there”. In some cases “がんばれ” means “hang in there”, but in many other cases it means more like “try harder” or “make more efforts”. Saying “make more efforts” to people in trouble is cruel, but it is typical Japanese mentality.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m having a harsh period in the current work place. Today a Canadian colleague, who understands my current situation, kindly talked to me. I told him what happened to me recently, and he said “hang in there”. Partially because I work with Canadians and Japanese now, I was confused with “hang in there” and “がんばれ”, and kept complaining, while I was supposed to say “thanks”.

He was right. If I hang in there, eventually things will (probably) work out. He knew it. As I wrote in a previous post, income often hides unwanted reality, and also makes people less patient. What I feel now is much better than what I felt during the helpless job hunting which I eventually overcame, but now I feel unhappy. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, but what saves me makes me weaker. I should remember what I felt when I let things happen. Today I missed to say “thanks”, but someday, when I overcome the current situation, I’ll tell him “I hung in there”.

As I wrote in another previous post, I felt something like “deja vu”, which actually was not, and as I hoped in that post, I’ve got a permanent full-time position. Things are happening. I should remember what I felt when I was unemployed, and see how the looser will fail, no matter what fortune cookies say.

January 29, 2014Permalink

Meeting Japanese Buddha on New Year’s Day

“Are you a member?”
“Yes.”

This simple conversation at a museum cafe today made me feel a little bit honored. Yesterday I purchased a ROM, Royal Ontario Museum membership. As I wrote in a previous post, I’m a museum freak. Since I live in Toronto now, it’s quite reasonable to be a ROM member. As I wrote in another previous post, I like to visit a museum to meet Buddha. In the other post of today, I wrote that I have decided to do something instead of having my family’s traditional New Year’s Day dish. The other thing to do, besides watching the first sunrise, or 初日の出, is to meet Japanese Buddha and Shinto Kami in ROM. Visiting a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine in the first week of the year is Japanese tradition, 初詣. I know museums do not exhibit Buddhism “art” for this reason, but for me it is a good place in Canada to meet Buddha.

Not having my family’s traditional New Year’s Day dish was very disappointing. But because of that, I did two Japanese customs for New Year’s Day that I had never done in Canada. This is a good start of the new year.

As I wrote in that previous post mentioned above, those Buddhism art works are not originally “art” but religious practice. In Japan, as I commented on a photo in one of my facebook photo albums, even small Shinto shrines are well treated by locals. However, those statues of Buddha and Shinto Kami in museums are not treated in that way. Visiting a museum to meet them is my own way to worship them.

Anyways. It was a good way for me to start the New Year.

January 1, 2014Permalink

Happy New Year! (Canada time)

Happy New Year, Canada!

As I wrote in a previous post, I could not afford the time to make my family’s traditional New Year’s Day dish, 正月の煮物. Nothing can substitute for it. Instead, I have decided to do something else desperately; I decided to watch the first sunrise of the new year. This is Japanese tradition. I went to Centennial Park.

The first sunrise of the year 2014

I was quite happy to watch it. I was really happy. I only have a compact camera, and the photo above does not represent what I actually saw. It was way more beautiful. I was impressed. It’s worth waking up early and waiting for some time in windchill -20°C.

Last year I had been somehow depressed because of the temporary job and the subsequent job hunting. I hope the year 2014 will be a good one for me. It’s good to start a new year with a happy feeling.

January 1, 2014Permalink

Happy New Year! (Japan time)

Yes, it is still December 31st in Canada, but it’s already January 1st in Japan. Happy New Year!

As I wrote in the previous post, I made a Christmas greetings web site for my Canadian friends. It’s been slightly modified and now it is a New Year’s Day greetings site for my Japanese family, relatives and friends. Sending New Year’s Day greeting cards is Japanese tradition, just like sending Christmas cards in Western countries. Here is the illustration from the web site.

Happy New Year 2014, the Year of the Horse

2014 is the year of the Horse, so I combined Christmas and the horse to make this illustration. Daikoku Santa Claus, sitting on bales of rice, rides a chuck wagon to bring fortune to everyone. He is Calgarian!

Wish everyone good luck for the year 2014.

December 31, 2013Permalink

Wherever I was… But…

As I wrote in an old post a year ago, I always make my family’s traditional New Year’s Day dish, 正月の煮物, wherever I am. But for the New Year’s Day next year (3 days from today), I cannot make it… I will have to work on Mon. 30th and Tue. 31st, which means I will have no time to make it. This is very disappointing…

Though I cannot do that yearly event, I have done another annual event recently: making my own Christmas greetings web site with an original illustration of the year. I made my first greetings web site in 2010, and have made it yearly since then. This year, too, I made it, and sent invitation (URL, user name and password. It is my private message and password protected) to my Canadian friends on Christmas Day. I will post the illustration on Jan. 1st. It will be my New Year’s Day greetings web site for my Japanese friends.

When I lived in Calgary, the landlord invited me to their Christmas dinner. On New Year’s Day, I shared my 正月の煮物 with them. They told me that having my 正月の煮物 became an annual event for them. This year I sent them and other friends invitation email to my Christmas greetings web site. Some of them replied to tell me that they always enjoy my annual greetings web site.

Wherever I am, whatever it is, it’s good to have a yearly event to connect with my friends.

December 29, 2013Permalink

Memory of Mess

The freezing rain in Southern Ontario last weekend changed many things. Tree branches coated with a thick clear layer of ice look incredibly beautiful especially around sunset. But the same phenomenon on something else left a big problem for a huge number of people in the region; some power lines were down because of a heavy thick layer of ice. It’s been five days since the ice storm, but thousands of people are still living without power.

In an early post, I wrote about scenery and seasonal food; autumn leaves even in Canada remind me of some seasonal Japanese food. In another early post, I wrote about a strange connection between a natural disaster and my childhood memories; a typhoon (or hurricane) evokes memories of chestnuts. A day after the ice storm, I drove in the city and witnessed what the natural disaster left. Unlike the memory of typhoon and chestnuts, it was more straightforward. When I saw traffic lights turned off, I remembered the mess after the massive earthquake that hit Eastern Japan on March 11, 2011.

It even evoked the emotion at the time. I quit a job a day before the earthquake. A job interview had been scheduled soon after that, but it was cancelled because of the mess after the earthquake. It was the start of helpless job hunting. TV news revealed the severe, unbelievable reality in the disaster areas day by day. I felt completely helpless. It is surprising to find that even a small event, turned-off traffic lights, can evoke such emotion. It was probably the combination of the scenery and the current situation. As I wrote in a previous post, I got a new temporary job, which means that until recently I had been unemployed. The manager of the current work place told me that he expects me to work for a long term, but nothing is guaranteed. Probably a glimpse of the mess after a natural disaster combined with the current unstable situation evoked the emotion.

Today I went boxing day shopping. After buying some nice shirts, although they were discounted, I thought “can I really afford them?” Income often hides unwanted reality. Now I have a job, have income, but it is still unstable and, above all, it is not a job that I want. I’m still a looser. I should remember hungry spirit as I wrote in an old post a year ago.

December 26, 2013Permalink

Things are happening. Let’s see.

As I often write, I cannot predict my future as I wish. So, as I wrote in a previous post, now I let things happen. As a result, things are happening.

Yesterday I had a job interview for a freelance job. This is very unusual. As a freelance translator, I have worked for many clients and translation companies. Most of them are outside of Canada, and I do not expect to see them in person. This is what freelance translation job is typically like. But a translation company in downtown Toronto invited me for an interview for a freelance job after reviewing my trial translation, which means I am qualified. First, I was confused, and then after talking with them, I was impressed. They have a unique style. Though they cannot tell how often they will assign translation or interpretation jobs to me (which is quite understandable), I expect it would be interesting job opportunities. We’ll see.

Today I got a phone call from a recruiting agency. Unlike typical recruiting agencies as I wrote in a previous post or in another old post, they are reliable (the only reliable one so far). They have arranged a job interview for a full-time position. It is not an ideal job, but I need a decent full-time job anyways. I’ll visit a company the day after tomorrow.

Besides those remarkable events, I got some messages about freelance jobs from prospective clients in last couple of days. Things are happening. Whether they are typical freelance job, interesting freelance job, or decent full-time job, what I can do is to do my best and wait. Let’s keep letting things happen. We’ll see.

As I wrote in an old post about a year ago, apparently I am a loser. Let’s see how a loser will fail.

November 12, 2013Permalink

Happy Birthday, BoA!

Today I had cake. Why? Because it’s BoA’s birthday today!

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday Dear BoA!

It was a year ago when I wrote about BoA in an old post. I have not met her in person, of course. She is a celebrity. But somehow she has been special for me over a decade. She debuted in Japan when I lived in the Kingdom of Tonga. At that time, we did not have YouTube, (actually I had neither telephone nor internet access at home. It’s a small developing country) and I did not know what was going on in Japan’s music world. When I came back to Japan in December 1999 and saw her on TV, I did not know she was Korean, and did not know “BoA” was her name; I thought she was a vocalist of a band named BoA. In the following year, when I watched her video clip, Jewel Song, I was shocked.

Can a person sing that beautifully?

She is beautiful, and her singing is even more beautiful. As I wrote in the old post, I want to believe that she sings beautifully because she sings from her heart. Anyways, she and her singing have been somehow special for me since then.

In an interview, she thanked fans of her and said “because there is me, there are fans of me. Because there are fans of me, there is me.” She sings for her fans. When I am lost, I often recall her words. What do I do for what, or for whom? As I often write, I am looking for a full-time job and do freelance jobs to survive. I am lost. I may need some time to sit back, listen to BoA’s songs, and rethink what I really need for what.

By the way, before I started writing this blog post, I shuffle played my “BoA palyer” that contains songs from all original albums and other major singles. The first song that the player randomly chose out of 197 songs was Happy Birthday. Like I wrote in a previous post, I dare not to conclude anything, whether it was coincidence or something else. But something may happen on a special day, right?

November 5, 2013Permalink

Seven hours was not enough to indulge my passion for culture.

Everyone has unique habits, right? One of my weirdest habits is to spend a long time at a museum. When I travel and whenever I have enough time, I visit a museum of the place. When I visited Toronto for the first time in 2002, I went to ROM, Royal Ontario Museum, and loved it. Since then, I’ve visited there a few times, but I always don’t have enough time. Today I entered at 10:30 am and stayed until it closes at 5:30 pm, but seven hours was not enough to indulge my passion for culture.

I prefer museum to art gallery. Most pieces displayed in a museum were, unlike those in an art gallery, originally made because it was needed for something: for religious belief, politics, war, or most interestingly, for daily life of the time. Who imagined that a bowl that they used daily would be displayed in a museum thousands of years after? When I stand in front of a piece of ancient kitchenware, I imagine how artisans made it and how people used it. I visualize their life, and find I spent a long time at one place in the museum… I know this is a weird habit.

Another favorite thing to do at a museum is to see Japanese things. Many people suppose that I dislike Japan because I talk about lots of bad things about Japan. But it’s not true. Think in this way; how many people who have been married for decades talk about good things about their spouse? When I visit a museum outside of Japan and see Japanese things, I feel pride in it, and even feel encouraged. Today I found a piece of Ukiyoe (Japanese woodblock prints) made by my most favorite Ukiyoe artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and stood in front of it for a few minutes. I was happy because I could tell it was his work before reading the description, and happy to see his work outside of Japan. Because I was watching it for so long time, some Canadians seemed to think it was something special, and looked at it curiously!

One thing that I am not very happy about in ROM is the collection of “the local”. Glenbow Museum is one of my favorite places in Calgary. It’s way smaller than ROM, but their collection of Native North America is, as far as I remember, more impressive than that in ROM. My most favorite museum in Japan is Tokyo National Museum. They have a huge collection of Japanese things. When I was in Japan and a Canadian friend of mine visited Japan, I brought her to Tokyo National Museum because she is interested in Japanese culture. Both of us were impressed, and I was proud of it. Another example of great collection of “the local” is Museum of Anthropology in the University of British Columbia where I spent a long time but needed more time. If ROM has something like that… I will need even more time to stay there!?

October 5, 2013Permalink

Deja Vu? No! I remember this.

When I started writing this blog, I was looking for a job, like I do now. The difference between now and then is that I was a full-time job seeker then and now I’m a part-time job seeker while doing freelance jobs. I was a little disappointed/depressed this morning: I finished a small freelance job a day before yesterday, and today I was expecting the client to contact me for a new job offer (as he implied he would), but he did not. Then something happened that is very similar to my experience that I wrote in an old post. I had a chance to chat with a friendly cashier. He is an immigrant from Pakistan, and we shared some difficulties that immigrants face. I told how difficult it is to find a full-time job, and he said “you will get a good job”. It was like deja vu, but actually I remember it happened about a year ago as I wrote in the old post. Although he does not know me, conversation like that encourages me. After the encouraging event a year ago, I actually got a full-time job though it was a temporary contract one. Let’s assume it will happen again, hopefully a permanent one for this time.

Last time I wrote about two encouraging events. Did something else happen this time? Yes. I had a chance to meet my “old” friends in downtown Toronto yesterday. I came to Canada in 2003 as I wrote in a previous post, so my Canadian friends who I met in Calgary around that time are my “old friends”. It was only for a short time, but whatever we talk, conversation with my old friends makes me feel the world is a better place than I suppose.

 

Reunion with "old" Canadian friends in downtown Toronto
Reunion with “old” Canadian friends in downtown Toronto
September 30, 2013Permalink