Today (21st of June) is the Summer Solstice. In Japan there is also a partial Solar eclipse. Unfortunately here in Vienna this time it cannot be observed. Summer solstice and and a solar eclipse (New moon) on the same day, of which some people say that it could mean that something special might be coming. I do not know, I have limited knowledge. All I can see is that it rains every day. I think this may not be very unusual in Vienna.
Now in Japan it is rain season. Once I spoke to a Japanese friend who used to live in Vienna about rain season in Japan and I said that there is no rain season in Vienna which is nice. She replied that in her opinion there is a slightly rainy period in June here in Vienna. I thought that could indeed be the case. It could be said that now there is a “mini rain season” in Vienna now.
Recently sometimes the rain noise wakes me up during the night. This morning I woke up and was surprised that already around 4 AM the twilight started to illuminate the sky somewhat. Today is New Moon and also rain which means it should be quite dark. However Vienna is at a latitude where the daylight hours in summer are longer. But starting tomorrow, the days will get shorter every day and so maybe I can sleep better.
Due to coronavirus related travel restrictions I still cannot go to Italy to my voice teacher. But I still have the previous recordings of my lessons with her and so I can nevertheless learn a lot. At home I kept trying to understand those lessons and kept trying over and over again. I have noticed that recently I can sing the way I want to express myself. I am so happy and want to continue on this path. I give thanks to my voice teacher and look forward to seeing her again soon.
Classical singing, which I am specialising in, truly is a precious art. Everyone can sing somehow but there is only one right way to master this art. That can only be studied with a good teacher. I can say that everything that I have experienced, also with all previous teachers, has supported my path. I am very grateful for that. My path is not straight, there have been many detours and obstacles but I want to believe that all of it has value. In the future I would like to convey the best and most correct to others through my experiences.
When I was a juniorhigh school pupil , I studied piano siries “Children’s corner” by Claude Debussy. The title of the first piece is “Gradus ad Parnassum” and my piano teacher commended me for playing this piece very well, which made me very happy. I heard that this title “Gradus ad Parnassum” means a difficult path which has to be followed anyway. I find it amusing that Debussy chose this title for the first piece in “Children’s corner”. I grew from this children’s corner and now have reached an age when I can look back at the path to Parnassus but I am still continuing on it.
Cats are very cute. Even when they are naughty, I find them cute. I love all about cats! Especially the ears are one of my preferred parts of cats. They are thin and when I lightly pinch them, I feel happy. Cats mostly let me do that without problems. We talk to cats and we think they are listening but I heard that cats can choose what to hear. That may be because we think they are listening to us when in fact they are listening to something else or just ignoring us. You never know!
I think this applies to humans as well. When during my education at university I had to teach at a high school, the class teacher I was assigned to said “the pupils only hear what they want to hear”. For example if there is a trip planned for the next day they like that information but in other cases they don’t remember at all what had been said. Therefore when I have something important to say, I should repeat it several times. I found that interesting and so when once I spoke about important information I wanted to check whether the pupils were really paying attention. I told one pupil to repeat what I had said but she could not and so it really is better to repeat the message several times. This does not only apply to pupils but to adults as well. I have experienced similar situations many times in life. If one wants to really make others understand something important, it is better to repeat that message several times.
I cannot complain about others, I am the same. I sometimes notice that I too am not really paying attention to other people and that my mind sometimes wanders… This may be due to a lack of concentration ability. In this respect I have a somewhat unpleasant memory. When I was a child my father taught me at home, also during the holidays. I am grateful that he so diligently wanted to teach me things, but his explanations were very long and quite repetitive. Therefore I developed a method of seeming to listen and sometimes reply “Yes, yes”. In my head however I heard the music I wanted to hear or thought about things I would have liked to do at that moment. This method was successful but I noticed that I have some difficulty with concentration. When I had to do something with concentration, my mind wandered and other thoughts came to my mind. I cannot blame everything on my father’s lectures but I suspect one factor of it lies there. I started to do concentration exercises sometimes and now I am doing much better.
But the cat ear method of choosing what to hear is not always bad. For example if my flight is delayed and around me there is much noise, I can sink into my thoughts or let music flow inside my head. And I think “I now have cat’s ears”, which gives a funny happy feeling.
Now is the season for cherries and they are offered at Viennese supermarkets. I think cherries are fruits that are mostly harvested in regions with a cooler climate. In Japan, cherries from Yamagata in northern Japan are well known. Every year, one of my mother’s friends living in the north, sent us a box of Yamagata cherries. They are much lighter in colour than those in the picture above and quite expensive. Since cherries are seasonal fruits, they can only be enjoyed for a short time. I remember that those cherries in the box sparkled like jewels to my eyes.
Austria is situated northerly enough and there are many cherry trees, also in many private gardens of houses and those owners can harvest beautiful cherries from their own trees. But often there are white worms inside the cherries. In Japan, cherries are special delicacies and it is wondrous to me that people can just pick them from their own trees and I had never seen worms in them. Austrian friends said worms are a sign of naturalness and of not using pesticides. If you leave cherries in water overnight, those worms will come out and you can enjoy those cherries worm-free. If you should swallow a worm, that is actually no problem and Austrians say that they consist mostly of protein.
Still to me it is unusual to eat cherries with worms and so for many years I decided not to buy any cherries in Austria. But the cherries are so beautiful and in their season there is the opportunity to buy them at a reasonable price. One time, more than 15 years ago, I gathered the courage and went to a market to buy some cherries. I asked the vendor whether his cherries had worms in them. He replied proudly “none of my cherries have any worms, see for yourself!”. He opened one cherry with his fingers and we both saw a white worm moving inside. Both of us could not speak any more and I left the stand without cherries.
Now in Austria however, there are cherries from many different countries. Recently I bought some from Greece, the ones in the picture above are from Italy. My Austrian husband always tells me that nowadays in supermarkets they don’t sell cherries with worms. And he says” If the unlikely case should occur, who really cares? It is mostly protein!” That is why I started buying cherries in Austria, they all taste quite good, no matter where they come from. Still to this day I need a little courage to eat cherries .
Yesterday was Father’s Day. If I had called my father on the phone in Japan, he would have been very happy about it. Sadly, I could not do that because he passed away at old age in 2013.
He was a high school teacher. There were some students who were close to him and every year some of them came our house at New Year to visit, even when he grew older. He gave them a warm welcome and served food and drinks. From a young age, I always had to greet those people or other guests when they arrived and again when they left. I was quite shy and it was hard for me but I think that as a teacher and father he did the right thing.
My father wanted to become a lawyer and studied law at Chuō University in Tokyo. Unfortunately because of the Second World War he could not pass the law exam. He taught poltitics, economics, ethics, world history and Japanese history . At home he used to read a lot and always continued studying. His spirit of studying had a strong impact on me and I really respect it.
He did not only study by himself but also spoke a lot to his family about his studies. Because of my father’s decision, at home it was almost only allowed to watch the news on TV. He always gave critical remarks and an analysis of the news to us. Thereby as a small child I could listen to his words. I could be said that he was teaching his own family every day. Especially during the summer holidays he made plans for me and I had to study all day under his watch.
This diligent motivation for study was well known among his relatives but he was infamous for forcing relatives’ children to study. However I am sure that those relatives did not know my father’s funny side. He was a wonderful teller of fairy tales. About dogs and cats he could invent funny stories and I really liked to listen. Also surely I was the only person who could do insolent things to him. For example combing his hair or sitting on his shoulder (of course as a small child). If relatives had seen that, they would surely have been amazed because my father was known as a strict person.
He lived to be over 90 years old. Sadly he developed dementia late in life and so what he said was no longer fully reasonable. That made me said. But what he taught me, especially ethics and politics, I do value and cherish a lot. Furthermore he was a motivated singer! Over about 80 years old he studied Japanese Noh theater singing. Because I chose the path of specialised classical singer, he spoke for hours about vocal technique. Surley his relatives do not know that. I know that he wishes for me to walk this path ever more deeply and become a good voice teacher.
Recently on Mariahilfer street in Vienna, I found those two new things. The one above looks rather strange, it is mounted on a fire hydrant. On top there is a solar panel. I did not understand what it is and for many days we talked about its purpose. Today on the internet we found what it is good for! It is a device that sprays fine mist when the temperatures are high in order for people to cool down. It is quite warm in Vienna now and I can hardly wait to see it in action.
The device on the picture below is obviously a trash can. It also wears a solar panel as a “hat”. I understand that it is an automated trash compactor which reduces the size of the waste so that one can put more in it. How fantastic!
Because both feature solar panels I suppose their operation is quite ecological. Devices that are well thought out for the environment are very important. I would like to welcome them to Mariahilfer street and I hope they will do a good job!
When I was very young, I was walking on the street with a friend on a windy night. I noticed that the moon in the sky was moving quickly. I was fascinated and said to my friend “Look, the moon is moving so fast!”. Then my friend said “No, the clouds are moving fast”. That is correct of course, the moon never moves so quickly that it would be visible. I felt quite embarrassed.
I think that such optical confusions exist sometimes. For example, when the train I am travelling on is stopping at the station and there is another train in the opposite direction starts moving, I get the sensation that my train is moving as well. Have you had such experiences?
I think that I am not able to face away from the direction of travel on trains or buses. I have heard however, that this is a deception of my eyes because the outside scenery is coming from behind and is moving to the front which my eyes find uncomfortable. It is said that when one closes the eyes, one cannot exactly sense the direction of movement. I tried it and I think it could be true.
I find the diference between visible and actual things very interesting. When I experience such a thing, I try to enjoy it.
Now there are many movements against incorrect or unjust circumstances. Even though Coronavirus has not gone away, many people gather to protest. About one year ago, here in Austria there were huge protests because of a problematic video of a political leader . Many people spontaneously gathered one after the other at Hofburg (near government offices) to protest, the voices grew ever louder. This really happened in the city where I live.
Nowadays through the spreading via the internet it is possible to spread information or contacts worldwide. Therefore one could easily think that everything might work like this. Of course the internet makes many things possible but in the end if we want to really move something, people in fact have to gather in person and raise their voices. The power of human crowds is enormous!!
When I was very young my family very often visited my father’s house. That house was in Aki city in the Eastern part of Kochi prefecture. Back then there was a streetcar from Kochi city to Aki city. That streetcar was quite slow with many intermediate stops and so the journey time was rather long. But I liked this journey. Because I liked to look out the window! The seats were up against the window and so I was allowed to take off my shoes and sit on the seat looking out the window. Sunny days, rainy days, daytime, nighttime…I saw so many different views from the window and I was never bored.
A highlight of this journey was the ocean view. Kochi city is not far away from the ocean but since my family did not have a car it was rare for me to be able to see the ocean. Approaching Aki city, this streetcar ran close to the ocean. Because I love the ocean I was eagerly awaiting it. When I could catch a glimpse of the ocean throught the trees my heart almost exploded with excitement. On the coast there usually are many pine trees. And to my eyes it looked as though the trees came close to me, slowly turned, and showing their other side said goodbye. When I noticed that, I joyfully said to my mother “Mother, look! Fashion show of trees!”. Then she said to me “The trees are standing still, the streetcar is moving!”. I thought I understood but to my eyes it looked as though the trees were turning and that seemed miraculous.
Even when I take the streetcar right now, I remember the “fashion show of trees”. But to the eyes of my grown up self it does not look like the trees are turning. It is a miracle that back then I could observe it in amazement. Also back then during those journeys the most frightening aspect were the tunnels. Tunnels seemed to me as frightening as the end of the world. I get a warm feeling bacause back then “fashion show of trees” as well as “tunnel” I did experience with the emotions of a child. And I think it is a little bit sad that I no longer have this sense.
During dinner I like to watch TV. Recently I noticed that TV programs almost always feature shows with criminal contents. I can say that I am in fact a cautiously fearful person and even cannot stand seeing my own blood and when I get an injection I turn my head to the other side crunching my teeth. If I am directly affected by something, even a small injection, often I am able to react. Such a self can watch dead people while having dinner. Since when have I become such a cold hearted person? Do I no longer feel other people’s pain? Then I remembered a scene from a film.
In this film the main character is a mermaid turned human. She watches TV for the first time. She just saw a tragic scene in a film and she is shocked, shows a lot of compassion and starts crying. Her human friend, a man, calms and consoles her by explaining that this violence on TV was not real and in fact just acted.
Nowadays we are overwhelmed by films, TV shows, etc. depicting accidents, violence, and many dead people in everyday life. Also because of the news, the internet, etc. every day we are touched by reports about accidents, violent crimes, etc. I think if we have too close contact with tragedy then over time we lose human feelings such as fear or compassion. This aspect should be considered in the development and production of media so that it does not become too overwhelming.
Of course watching dramas, films, art, etc. enriches our lives and it is good to be informed about the world. Nevertheless I think those who offer and those who receive, like the mermaid having just become human, should not lose our naive and natural hearts and compassion.
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