Hidemi Woods 

I usually watch US TV dramas and movies by recording them on a digital video recorder. As the selection is unbearably limited in Japan, I make up other US programs by getting DVDs. Recently, my DVR hasn’t been in good shape and I needed to come up with a new way to watch US shows. I use a fiber-optic Internet connection at home and it earns points every month. Those points are redeemable for a Hulu subscription and I noticed my accumulated points were worth about six-month free Hulu. I decided to get a Fire Stick TV to watch Hulu on the TV screen and stepped into the Hulu world for the first time. An almost countless, vast numbers of US shows and movies have become available twenty-four seven. It flipped a switch in my brain to an English mode and let me feel as if I lived in US. Rather, I felt as if I lived inside the drama, to be exact. I finally got to watch ‘The Walking Dead’ that wasn’t aired in Japan and I’d been dying for. As I watched two or three episodes per day every day, I thought about the story even while I wasn’t watching it. I’m all jumpy when I walk along the dim hallway of my apartment building every night. Since I live in a remote, rural town, a view from my apartment simply consists of mountains, woods and the sky. Thanks to that and Hulu, I now can forget about being in Japan except for the time I go to the city once a week. I even get the illusion that I successfully escaped from life in Japan without living abroad. It may be possible that I have acquired my desired life by this way in which I plug away at my music here and take a trip to US or Canada once a year or two. And that makes me wonder. Is my desired life writing and recording songs in my small apartment that nobody would listen to until I die? On the other hand though, it’s a waste of life to get money and fame by writing a catchy empty hit song with casual effort. Does that mean life goes to waste either way? It’s ideal that my strenuous song makes a smash hit by chance and I get successful without losing anything. Does that mean we have to live depending on luck? Is the only way we attain happiness by giving up greed for money and fame, or does that mean a loser? Too many US TV shows have led me into too much thinking. They are interesting and amusing enough to cause lack of sleep every night and I’m in slightly poor condition. As I’ve been concerned about dizzy spells that occurs once or twice a day lately, I had a dream in which I had massive vertigo and the world was whirling…