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Hidemi Woods 

Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.

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Blog posts : "Hidemi's Rambling"

Hidemi's Rambling No.535

Since I booked a low-cost carrier flight to LAX from Japan, now I’ve looking for a hotel to stay in California. The best scenario is to find a high-class hotel at a bargain price, but it’s not easy to come across such a good deal. I have to decide between a cheap hotel and a moderate one. My partner…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.534

Hidemi's Rambling No.534

Hidemi's Rambling No.533

New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday in Japan. It’s as big as Thanksgiving and Christmas put together. It’s a day when millions of people visit shrines and temples wearing kimono or their best clothes and pray for good luck by offering money into the boxes. Before midnight, shrines and temples begi…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.532

I spent my schooldays from junior high to college at a Catholic school not for religious reasons but for my mother’s vanity. She wanted me to attend the most prestigious school in Kyoto in order to brag about it. With no religious background, I encountered quite a few unfamiliar events at school tha…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.531

I came across the special offer on the ticket of a low-cost carrier on the Internet. I was going to take a trip to California in the holiday season of next year and have saved money for it. But to take this time-sale offer, I decided to bring forward the trip to next May and booked it. Even though t…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.530

I visited my hometown in Kyoto the other day. When I visit there, I usually stay at a hotel instead of my parents’ house, as I don’t get along well with them. This time, I took the municipal subway to the hotel. I hadn’t ridden the subway in ages. To the best of my memory, the last time I rode it wa…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.529

The first apartment I rented on my own a long time ago was located on the edge of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The neighborhood was full of vacant lots and there were few shops near the subway station. In front of the apartment was a vast, newly built street, on which cars seldom passed by. It was a…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.528

About six months after I moved into the apartment I now live in, I began to see this woman frequently at the communal spa. We just exchanged hellos for weeks and then started chatting about the weather. She is a lively woman who is around sixty years old and laughs a lot. I secretly nicknamed her ‘A…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.527

The high school I attended held a mandatory summer camp when I was a freshman. The students chose activities such as swimming, hiking, cycling and so on beforehand. To spend the time in the camp together, my group of close friends at school decided to choose the same activities. We considered carefu…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.526

A Japanese band Tulip is the decisive reason that I chose a musician as my lifelong career. It literally changed my life entirely when I came across their music. I’ve been an avid fan of them since I was a high school student. The band had broken up, but has been reunited occasionally for its annive…

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Hidemi's Rambling No.525

The nearest train station from my home that I usually use has no station attendants on site. All it has are a ticket vending machine and an emergency phone. There’s no ticket gate either. A passenger gets a ticket from the machine and goes directly onto the platform. Upon arrival, they put the used …

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Hidemi's Rambling No.524

In the middle of August every year, Japan has the Bon Festival. It’s believed that spirits of ancestors return to each family during the festival. If I had stayed in my hometown of Kyoto and gotten married there, I would have been the 63rd successor of the family. I suppose my ancestor had acquired …

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.523

When my great-great-grandfather passed away, the family sought any possible way to sustain a line of the family succession. He had four sons. His firstborn, who had been supposed to succeed the family, was perverted possibly because his father had drunk up the family fortune. He had tattoos all over…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.522

The oldest episode of my ancestors that I heard from my grandfather is about my great-great-grandfather and I hereby write it down for the record. According to my grandfather, his grandfather was quite a prodigal. He didn’t work and just squandered the family money. Our family was a powerful landown…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.521

I happened to find a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in the city where I often go shopping. For those who aren’t familiar with it, let me explain what it is. Conveyor belt sushi is a self-service system to serve sushi on a narrow conveyor that winds around the restaurant. Sushi is put on a small plat…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.520

Let me report how a small rural town I live in has been lately. Since there are many skiing slopes in the town, the forlorn main street has ski lodges, B and Bs, souvenir shops and rental ski shops. Quite a few had been out of business as the skiing boom was gone. One out of every three shops is clo…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.519

After the incident of table manners, I had closed a business of being a class clown at school. I had stopped making others laugh and hadn’t accommodated their requests for jokes any more. It yielded an immediate effect. I used to be the center of a circle of students but they were dispersed from me …

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.518

I spent my teenage life at a privileged Catholic school. Most students came from wealthy families and some were famous. As a farmer’s daughter, I belonged to the few non-wealthy students. I thought a farming family was regarded as poor and unsophisticated in this school, and tried to hide the fact t…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.517

There’s an old Japanese custom called ‘Age of Thirteen Visit’. A child who reaches thirteen years old by the traditional system of age reckoning visits a specific local shrine to receive wisdom. The important event has one critical rule. The thirteen-year-old visitor should never look back until the…

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Hidemi’s Rambling No.516

A couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard a loud thud. I thought something had fallen from the shelves, but the minute I dozed off, a thud woke me up again. This time, it sounded like my inner noise coming from my head. I opened my eyes and saw my room spinning vertic…

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20 blog posts