Things about me

Foreword

This is the perspective of my life story. Other people’s perspectives may be entirely different. All I can say is that this is my version of the story, including my feelings and thoughts. Others may not understand my feelings and thoughts, but I understand them myself. Therefore, it is difficult to determine which story is right because both sides of the story can be considered right. What I felt and what they felt are both correct. However, they do not know everything about me. They only perceive what is on the surface. Additionally, they can amend my story to some extent, but they cannot correct my emotions. 2023 written by Ottosan.

Inception

From my current perspective, I wonder why I was born, and the same applies to my father and grandfather. If I may express it this way, it feels like a curse or punishment that has been passed down through generations in my family. None of us deserved the hardships we faced, but we endured them nonetheless. My grandfather passed away at the age of 36, and my father at 55. Now, it’s my turn, and I’ve slightly exceeded my father’s age. I don’t think it’s natural for both my father and grandfather to die at a young age. They likely wished to survive and support their families. Unfortunately, they couldn’t fulfill that wish. My father died in a car accident, and it’s possible that my grandfather did as well.

I was born in 1966 in a town called Shibetsu. Locals called it ‘Samurai-betsu’. Yes, Samurai. People all over the world have certain impressions of Samurais. Why was I born in a place called ‘Samurai-betsu’? It would not have mattered if I had been born in another town. Not everyone in this town has Samurai ancestry, but I think some people do.

When I was about 5 years old, when I started pre-school, there is a memory that I still can’t forget. It was a feeling of guilt. Can you imagine a 5-year-old carrying such a heavy burden? I was playing with my friends and running down the hallway at pre-school when something unexpected happened. I accidentally bumped my head into a girl’s face. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. The girl fell in the hallway and a teacher approached her to find out what had happened. I stood at a distance and watched the situation unfold. I tried to tell the teacher that it was my fault, but I couldn’t find the words. I was too scared to tell the teacher what had really happened.

This girl ended up with blue sclera on both of her eyes, and I felt like a sinner. I had made her eyes turn blue. From that day on, every time I saw her in the hallway, I wanted to apologize to her, but I couldn’t. If I told my mother about this incident now, she would probably dismiss it as nonsense, call me stupid and childish, and ridicule me as the reason I never grew up.

My mother never apologized to anyone. She had been criticized by her father since childhood and was constantly compared unfavorably to her younger sister, whom her father considered smarter. She harbored anger towards her younger sister for being the favored one and became someone who never apologized to anyone. If someone complained about her, she would say it was their problem, not hers. If she made a mistake, it was never her fault because she believed she never made mistakes. Her attitude hasn’t changed to this day.

Some of my childhood memories are pleasant, like playing games with the neighborhood kids. I can’t remember what we played, but it was a happy time. My father got into a bar fight and almost had his ear torn off. I had such painful memories. I think my mother called my father an idiot, not out of fear or concern, but because it was an arranged marriage between their parents. This happened when I was less than ten years old. My childhood memories are a mixture of happiness and a guilt, but the guilt was the heaviest burden. And it was.

It all started when my mother gave my father a cold shoulder. Until then, my father had seemed happy every day. I remember him laughing with his colleagues every day and having a beer with them at dinner. They were happy and I felt it.

Before he died, my father worked at a petrol station. Before the oil crisis, my father thought that they should stockpile as much petrol as possible, so he stockpiled petrol. When the oil crisis actually happened, it was thanks to my father’s efforts that they managed to survive the crisis.

At work, however, my father was unhappy with his job. He had his own ideas about how work should be done, but he was reluctant to express them clearly to his boss. During family dinners, my father would often complain about his boss, and my mother would encourage him to express his ideas about work to his boss.

But my father had only a secondary school education and limited career prospects. Eventually, my father confided his true feelings to his boss, who found him unpleasant and isolated him. From then on, my father’s colleagues stopped coming to our house for a drink, and a dark period began for our family.

My father had no place at work or at home. My father became lonely and drank heavily. My mother looked down on my father, ridiculing him for his low education, bald head and short stature. My mother had finished high school and felt superior to my father.

Every time we had dinner, she would mock and make fun of my father. This caused my father to drink even more, and as a result he became violent towards her, shouting and slapping her, questioning why she didn’t appreciate his efforts to support the family. My mother didn’t work at all. She just indulged in her own hobbies at home.

She played the piano, but she played the same phrases wrong over and over again. Her playing was not pleasant music, but noise. She was not good enough to buy an expensive piano. It was just something for her own pleasure.

Every day was a nightmare, with constant fighting and feeling helpless, without knowing what to do. When we came home from school, it became routine for my mother to look down on her husband and laugh maliciously, and for my father to become violent during dinner. We each had our own room, but when the fighting started, we had no choice but to leave the living room and retreat to our own rooms.

My younger brother asked me one night, ‘Why don’t you stop their fighting?’ Of course, I had my own reasons. I knew that my mother was the worst wife, causing all sorts of problems that led to fights. Also, violence was never justified. I was only a boy of 10 or 11 years old, but I knew that both my parents were wrong. So why should I intervene for no good reason?

We were always manipulated according to our mother’s wishes. My mother did not allow us to make many of our own decisions. She believed that her own satisfaction was all that mattered. This was far from a good example of parenting.

My Mother worked for a short period in a home where children of working parents could stay until they returned home. My mother was qualified to look after the children. As a result, we had to stay there after school until we could go home. Our experience there was unpleasant. I had to go there after school and my mother gave me special treatment I didn’t want to. I wanted to treat me like any other child. It was an unbearable experience.

I was unable to reject her special treatment, so you might ask if I did. I wasn’t given that choice. I couldn’t refuse. That was her way of parenting.

Every time the violence happened, I cried in my room, but I left it at that. One night my mother went to her parents’ house to get away from the violence and told them how horrible her husband was. The next day, my father went to her parents’ house and apologized to her and her parents, sitting up straight and lowering his head so that it touched the floor. He asked her to come home with us. He looked like a bad husband, but he wasn’t. A bad husband? Maybe, but it was my mother who caused all the problems. Going to her parents and giving them the impression that she was not a bad person is a terrible thing to do. It could even be seen as an insult to my father. What if my mother hadn’t laughed at my father in the first place? Maybe nothing would have happened.

When I was about 12 years old, my brother and I got involved in criminal activity. Do you remember that our neighbor was a bully? His friend tended to commit crimes and his family had problems. Our neighbor asked us to help him steal something from the supermarket. We were given the role of hiding the cash register behind our backs while he stole the money. We didn’t really want to do it, but our parents had told us to be nice to our neighbor and we couldn’t say no. So, we helped him steal the money. We were caught and taken to the police station. My father apologized to the police for what we had done and pushed me hard in the corridor. The police did not report our actions as a crime because they knew we were children. They did it as if nothing had happened.

On the way home, my father mentioned that he had pushed me on purpose. He did it to make it look like he was pushing me to think about what I had done, because he thought it would satisfy the police. That’s why he did it. I don’t remember if my mother was there. Either she didn’t say anything or she might have waited at home. You know her personality. She’s not very good at apologizing. Of course, my father forgave us, but he could not know why we had stolen. But the neighbor is not a bad person. He hasn’t always done bad things.

A year earlier, a neighbor, some classmates and I had done something extraordinary bad. There was a girl in the same class who often wore dirty clothes and she became a target for the neighbor in the same class. About five of us bullied her, including one girl. Every day at break they would roll up pieces of paper and throw them at her. I felt really bad that I was part of this behavior, but I couldn’t stop it. I was afraid of them. I was afraid that if I spoke out against the bullies, they would make me their next target or isolate me.

A few weeks or maybe just a week later, our teacher noticed what we had done to the girl. The teacher told us that we should apologies to her and her family for what we had done. We went to their house to apologies and they forgave us. But it showed me how weak I was and how I lacked the courage to stand up. I also suspect that there were reasons behind my neighbor’s tendency to behave in this way, possibly related to problems within his family.

The year after I turned 12, I started secondary school. When my mother bought my school uniform a few months before I started secondary school, it came with a radio. Listening to music on the radio was like a life-changing event for me. I had never listened to any music before. I wasn’t interested in Japanese pop music, but the music of 70s pop artists like Billy Joel, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin changed my life. Given my family’s difficult situation, it gave me comfort.

At that time, I had a strong desire to have an older sister and imagined that she would help me in my life. I always wanted to have an older sister. When I was in secondary school, my family broke up and I often thought about having a sister who did not exist. I wondered how much it would have helped me to have an older sister. Looking back, my 13 years were had not enough love.

When I was 13, my father bought me a cassette player with a radio at my uncle’s electronics shop. Every night I listened to music and imagined that I wished my older sister really existed. At least the music comforted me.

One summer, my mother told me to take part in after-school baseball and other activities. Other children were involved in other activities, so my mother may not have been happy with my choice. I reluctantly took up baseball. After about a month, I stopped playing. My mother was disappointed. My mother’s personality was such that she disliked anything that went against her wishes and saw it as a good thing to please her and often did not consider my personality or character.

I spent my first year listening to music and thinking about my older sister. I also liked building 1/35th scale World War II tank models. When I was 14, something happened that changed my life. An event that no one else would ever experience. And around the same time my younger brother got his own life for the first time. I can’t remember which was the first. But I think the worst was the first. I was watching television at night and I picked my nose and it started bleeding. You can’t imagine how a towel can be stained with blood in an instant. The towel was immediately stained with blood. I was horrified to see my own blood. My parents screamed for an ambulance. They couldn’t stop the bleeding from my nose. The doctor puts a cotton plug in my nose. That was it.

However, it made things worse. Because of the cotton plugs in my nose, I developed a strange habit of consciously passing snot down my throat. I became sensitive to the smell of my own breath. I could smell it. I thought everyone could feel my breath. I was afraid of people’s eyes. When people’s eyes reach the edge of the wall through my body, I feel as if I am being stabbed with a needle. I was very scared. I was a 14-year-old boy who knows nothing. And I have become a strange boy who did not show emotions to others.

In classrooms that had 40 students, everyone had their own desk and chair, and the rule was that men and women sat next to each other. The seat next to mine changed every next month. The girl sitting next to me moved a little further away from my desk every hour. At the end of that day’s lesson, she was sitting quite far away from me. I assumed that she moved away from me because of my bad breath. She sat away from my desk every day. The following month, another woman sitting next to me did the same. I was terrified, especially of women. And the situation was made worse for me because we were adolescent boys and girls and we were aware of each other.

Hormonal growth has made us a little more mature every day. As we became young adults, our bodies and minds changed. I feared women and men. It was because of my bad breath. I still had friends, but they were few. They were all men who liked to study. I was not clever. I was too scared to concentrate on my studies, which is why I got bad grades. I liked them. We had a good relationship. We talked a lot and it was the only time I had fun.

Fear was a constant in my day. I was very afraid to walk down the hallway and I was very afraid of the way they looked at me. I thought I would attract their attention and make them look at me. At the time, I thought these feelings were true. Looking back on my memories, it was not true. When I walked among people and they looked at me, they were unconsciously just looking at me. Perhaps my eyes frightened them. But fear was everything for me. This fear had taken over me. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to do, or even what I wanted to do. Every moment, every move was filled with fear. The reason for my fear is obvious. I didn’t want everyone to hate me.

Do you think a boy who was scared could do what he wanted or play what he wanted in public? No, he couldn’t. These events were the beginning of my life, and they determined everything about my future.

This was the story of the beginning of my brother’s life. My brother was two years younger than me, and my mother used to say to him. Follow your brother like he does. He was my shadow. My brother, who was 12 at the time, was always bothered by his parents’ quarrels. He told his parents. Stop fighting, don’t ever fight again. He said. Every day, my parents’ quarrels bother me, and when they quarrel, I feel sad. Some of his brother’s ideas were right, but they were not true. He did not understand everything. And most of all, my brother thought my mother was right about everything. Before this happened. My mother and we had some talk. I want to tell you how this event changed our relationship.

My family has a room that was unique. At that time, every Japanese family had a unique room. Sometimes we use it to pray to God for a New Year’s wish every year, but not every day. At any time of the year. This is called a ‘Japanese room’. Nowadays, Japanese people do not have a Japanese room. And my mother told us in the Unique Room. She wants to make sure you were on her side. Say yes to me. My brother said yes without hesitation, but I said nothing. And she made me say yes, a few seconds later. I lied. I am not on your side. I didn’t want to help you.

And that event changed my brother’s life. He was now free. There were no more shadows. He could do what he wanted to do. He can now say what he wants to say. My father changed. My brother and mother made my father was the bad guy. Everything my father did was made to be wrong. My father became as small as I had ever seen him. He was the mainstay of the family, but now he’s gone. Nobody cares for my father any more. Was that so? I didn’t think so.

My brother has been a bully since then. He bullied one of his classmates and his mother went to the primary school to apologize. My brother became evil. He stole something from a shop or broke something somewhere. And my brother was close to his mother, who was allowed to do whatever he wanted.

At the same time, a new neighbor moved into our neighborhood, whose family had a boy the same age as mine. My old neighbor liked him and never saw me again, which was good for me. My brother was so close to my old neighbor that brother and neighbor liked the same things. You can guess or imagine where they were going. I think they stole something together in a shop or something, they spent their time together. My brother looked down on me.

Currently, he was the second boss in the house. You know who was the pillar of our family. She had the right to make all the decisions. There was no room for a father. Money changed my life. When I was ten years old, my father and mother fought every day about money. Money, money, money. What about money? I hated it. I always thought they had money problems because they were always talking about money, but my family didn’t have money problems. And my mother loved money. Money is everything. She didn’t like spending money, and if she had a good reason to spend money, she would. But the piano? Are you crazy? Worth bought for the family? Absolutely not. My father would have preferred to spend the money on what he liked, but my mother wouldn’t allow it. I have never seen my father’s personal belongings. So, every time my parents talk about money, I felt bad. I hated money and alcohol. I hated money even more.

Spend three years in secondary school and the next three years in high school. I was 15 years old and in the senior year of secondary school. My brother and I went to the same secondary school. We saw each other in the hallways a few times, but never exchanged a word. He was a wild bad boy and I was more of a nerd. It was always like that. I felt distant from him. I felt like that he was a stranger. I think he liked me some way. But someone always said that we didn’t feel like brothers because we had different eyes, different noses and different personalities. People who didn’t know we said they thought we were friends or strangers. His face looked like his mother. My face resembled my father. We had different values and senses. And I was lonely.

One day my father was thinking about buying a VCR, so he asked me, which type of recording machine would I prefer. At the time everyone was saying which was better, Beta or VHS. I thought about it for a bit and told my father I preferred VHS. The reason was simple: at the time I thought it would be convenient if I could record eight hours at 3x. So, my father bought a red-colored VHS made by Sharp.

By the time, I had forgotten about the girl I had hurt. Even though we had attended the same school. Above all, the guilt was driven away because I had a fear of the people won out over guilt. But I still remember her name.

I was lonely, separated from all my previous friends because of a fight. That was when I was 14 years old. That’s when I was saved by a punk with a strong heart. He was like a boss of my classmates and had lots of friends. But I thought it was weird that he was my friend, because I was a freak. But he wasn’t really my friend and I think he and his friends felt sorry for me. He was my protector. I don’t know if I needed that. I lived near the secondary school, so they came to my house, spent an hour and left. I don’t know where they went after that. I don’t even remember what they talked about. But they spent time with me. In a way, I was lonely. But I spent a lot of time with the music.

When I was fifteen, I was still called a friend. Everyone in the world had a youth full of memories. A bad way or a good way, every experience they had. I didn’t have any experiences or memories, only fears. I was in a deep well, thinking about what the sky looks like, which I’ve never seen, at school I was afraid, at home I could breathe. That was it for me. Relief or fear. I could choose between the two. Others had no choice. Relief at home was my only world, what if I had a healthy mind, I never wanted this life I spent most of my life in. It’s only wasted a limited and important my life.

One day, my mother said that I didn’t show any defiance, which was easy for her. At that time, I still wished I had my older sister. My mother has low IQ I easily assume not a guess which could be 60-70. She couldn’t concentrate on anything or study. She went to high school was father’s power that she couldn’t do it herself.

Let’s return to when I was 14, which I forgot to mention. There was another argument between my parents. My mother left the house crying. I was very sad. Not because of my mother, but because of the fight. After a few minutes, I decided to run dry my tears. As I ran along the road, I passed a woman. A few days later we went to my mother’s parents’ house, and she accused me of ignoring her on the road. The woman I saw was my mother. She said that my ignoring her made her feel even sadder. The truth is that I was afraid to look at the woman’s face and when my grandmother questioned me, I couldn’t say anything, I was emotionless and kept my mouth shut. But I am sure she still carries the anger of that moment with it and will take it to her grave until she dies. This is the woman I knew.

All I can say about my mother is that it was a good person who was nice to her, it was a bad person who complained about her, and it was a special person who pleased her and that was my brother. She had a strong dislike for my father’s family. We had to go to my father’s family home every year as a family to talk to his brothers and sisters and to spend time with my grandmother. However, my mother always refused to go to her husband’s family home. Sometimes my mother went to father’s family, but not every year, so we cousins on my father’s side were strangers. My brother and I had conversations with the cousins, but they felt we were strangers to them, and it was a strange conversation. My mother was sick of spending time at her husband’s parents’ house. She would then urge my father to return home as soon as possible.

My mother felt extremely comfortable and at home in her parents’ house. We didn’t need a reason to go to my mother’s house, and whenever she wanted to go to her parents’ house, we would go. In a way, my cousins and we were like brothers. I can’t remember how many times a year we went. There were three boys in my mother’s family, and the third boy was the closest to me, but he was a year older than me. He was like an older brother to us. At that time, I recognized my own brothers as brothers, but at the same time he was like a shadow. But my cousin was different, my brother didn’t seem to understand what my cousin was doing to him. But my brother seemed to enjoy laughing with my cousin. My brother was only a boy of about ten years old, so maybe he didn’t know what my cousin was really doing.

I don’t recall ever being mean to my brother, as far as I can remember. My brother was still my brother and my shadow until he was on his own. But I think there are things he remembers about me that he never told me. When I went to high school, I didn’t go to my cousin’s house as much. Then I went to high school and I turned 16. I knew everyone at school, but I had never had a conversation with any of them before.

People who know me know that I was a strange person. Yes, strange because I had an interpersonal phobia. No experience, no social interaction. I was a weirdo. I know that. But I never understood it myself. All I know is that I was afraid of people. My head was covered with fear. I couldn’t tell people what I was thinking. All I had was fear. Most of the people at school said, how did this man get into this school? This man has no brain. There is no way he can come. Maybe his father paid this man’s school fees. You are wrong and you are wrong about my brain. But no one knows the truth and no one will ever know the truth.

I thought I would never go to university because my mother was always talking about money. But actually, when I was in high school, my father offered to buy me a stereo record player, an amplifier, an equalizer and two speakers in a set. We went to an electronics shop and my father told me to pick whatever I wanted. The average price of a stereo system was around 200,000 yen, which was not cheap, but one of them captured my heart. It was a Yamaha that cost over 300,000 yen. I still remember his surprised eyes when I said ‘I want that one’. A few seconds later he said, ‘If you want it, I’ll buy it’. It wasn’t mine, it belonged to both of us. When I was 50, I went on the internet to see if it was out there, but it wasn’t. It was a special one made by an electrician there.

But I thought our family was struggling with money because my parents talked about money every day, but I found out that I was fifties that we weren’t really struggling with money and that it was very expensive to graduate from high school and go to technical school. I thought that we didn’t have any money at the time, so I decided to take naps in all my classes. Actually, I just pretended to take a nap. I put my arms on the desk, crossed my arms, put my head on top of them, and from other people’s point of view, it looked like a nap. The fact that I could pretend to be asleep at break time and not have to walk down the hallway might have had a calming effect. If I needed to go to the toilet, I walked to the toilet. At the time I was still very scared. I had very few memories of school life. There were a few, but they were not very pleasant.

My old neighbor wasn’t smart, and we weren’t in the same school anymore. I didn’t care where he went. It was a new crossroads for us. A boy of the same age moved into the neighborhood and went to the same school with me. He wasn’t very clever, but he was a nice boy. We cycled to school together from spring to autumn. In winter it was difficult to go to school. It took 40 minutes to get from home to school. Sometimes my eyelashes would freeze from my own breath. Then spring came again. I could now cycle to school. Sometimes I overslept and went to school alone. Every time I felt it that I was going to a battlefield, and I was scared to death. That happened many times. My classmates didn’t try to scare me at all. But I was scared of people anyway.

I am now aware of the reason why the girls kept their distance from my desk at secondary school. I was sweaty and hated taking baths. My father used to say, ‘You smell sweaty’. Shit. I was wrong. It wasn’t bad breath. Why did I realize this in my late 40s? I’m as bad as dead. But psychologically, nobody understands this fear. Even doctors in hospitals can only give their patients drugs to calm them down. One summer afternoon, angry at my helplessness, I broke my bed and try to tell my family that I was broken. My room was upstairs, above the living room. I went down to the living room. Nobody said anything. It was as if nothing had happened. The sound of the break was loud enough for everyone to hear. In high school, I used to play guitar in my room. I loved rock and hard rock and still do. Rockers back then used to break their guitars on stage. I was not imitating them. It was anger against fear. I was sad about a life without a future. I had two guitars, one of which I couldn’t play as well as I wanted. I broke that guitar. One of the reasons was that I couldn’t play well because of that guitar. But my brother used to tell his friends that I was wild. He used to tell his friends that I was wild because I broke the guitar. I didn’t break it for that reason, but he wouldn’t understand why I did it. I haven’t done that since then.

When I was at school, I never thought about my older sister. I don’t know why. When I was in junior high school, I really wanted my sister to be there for me. Listening to music and playing the guitar might have changed my mind, but the fear was still over my head and heart. I couldn’t see anything because I was afraid. I could play the guitar, but I couldn’t do anything, but I could listen to music

A healthy mind is an important and essential part of the human development process. But I didn’t have it. I was not there at anywhere. My mind was not there. My brain was paralyzed with fear and I could not think. I just wanted to disappear. For three years at school, I just slept and was scared. But I forgot the smell of my own breath that people might notice. I don’t know why I forgot, but I was still afraid of people. I was afraid that people would see my face. I thought people were looking at me, but they weren’t.

They didn’t care about me. But I was afraid of their eyes. To be ruled by fear is to lose yourself, to not understand who you are. You lose sight of your own humanity and cannot understand the state you are in. Nevertheless, there were a few people I knew who wanted to exchange records, so I exchanged the records they had for the ones I had. I recorded it and return it a few days later, all the records I lent them came back a few days or a week later. I can say we had that kind of relationship, but it wasn’t a real relationship because we didn’t talk much. My parents gave me a monthly allowance and I spent it on something. That was the culture back then. I don’t know if all families give pocket money every month now, but half of my thoughts are that they probably don’t, especially in Japan. Most of the money I had was used to buy records. Nowadays you can listen to the music and then buy it, but in the past that wasn’t the case, so I used to buy records based on how good or bad the picture on the album was.

Sometimes I would go to classmate’s home with my friends. Because their house was on the way to mine. I wanted to be free from fear. I don’t know if they called me a friend or a weird kid. I don’t know if I should call them friends, and we only talked for an hour or so before I went home. The rest of the time I was practising rather than playing guitar. Naps, fear and guitar. Those were the only three things that happened to me during three years of high school. At the time, I didn’t think I could do what I wanted to do, but these three things were the only things present in my life.

Do you know why? Because fear limited what I wanted to do and I had no choice. Because my room was my only place of peace. I couldn’t go anywhere I wanted to go. The only place I could go was a record shop. It takes four hours by train to get to the city of Sapporo from the city of Shibetsu, where we live. The distance is over 190 km. I went there with my brother to see a rock concert.

Locals called it ‘Samurai Betsu’. Shibetsu had another town called Shibetsu. That is why the locals call Shibetsu ‘Samurai Betsu’. Did you know that ‘shi’ is another name for ‘samurai’, but they are the same thing just called differently. There are two kanji characters for ‘samurai’. That’s why ‘shi’ in our town is the same kanji as ‘samurai’.

My brother and I only shared a record player. My brother still called me his elder brother, but he thought he was better than me, that life was fun and that he could do anything, bad or good. I was at rock bottom, just falling and falling and falling. No one would call this life a youth. Some would say it is still developing. I should have experienced a healthy state of mind, conversations with friends, sharing thoughts and memories, but I didn’t even have that. I was with them, but my mind was elsewhere. If I had really been with them, I would remember something.

In my high school, there were two types of students. One was a girl who looked like a boy, and the other was a boy who looked like a girl. Both of them were accepted by everyone in the school. We saw them both as normal people, and I saw them both as normal people, so I had no objection. In fact, talking to them didn’t make me feel any different. But it was refreshing because I had never seen people like them before. Today they are called LGBTQ. Especially in Japan, if you come out with your identity or are seen as different, you are not treated as a person. You are judged and criticised. But adolescence is a cruel thing, and boys and girls everywhere do the same thing. The fact that there were two different kinds of people at the same age in my school, and everyone accepted it, was a miracle considering the times. If there were boys or girls at school who looked different, they would be bullied. Japan is still closed, not open. People who looked different to be excluded.

When I was eighteen, I went on a motorcycle trip with my classmates during the summer holidays. We had 50cc motorcycles, which never existed in modern times because of the two-stroke engine system. I begged my father to buy me a motorcycle, and he did. If I asked for my mother, the answer was already given before I said, especially with money, you know what the answer is. My father and mother were opposite to me. The whole trip we spent the night in two tents, one of which my father bought for us. The trip we took I remember two things, one of us slept on his motorcycle and went into a ditch, but he only had a scratch, so no big deal. We use to spend time at his house on the way home from school. The other was the last night, before we went back to our houses, we talked about where the best place to go to campsites were. If I remember correctly, it was called “Kamui campground”. It had little houses where we could sleep two or three people each. That discussion about where to go, which I won’t say anything about because I couldn’t think of anything and everyone knows I won’t say anything. I remember that the last night before we went back to the city, we had lamb meats. People in our area like to eat lamb meats, it’s part of our culture. We call it ‘Genghis Khan’, it’s funny, isn’t it? But I don’t understand why I remember two things that are not important, it doesn’t make sense. A funny memory. This memory can be called a memory, but I wasn’t even there, my mind was somewhere else.

Another painful memory is of a classmate telling me I was gay. I was running from fear and wanted someone to help me. I was asking for help. But there was a handsome boy who was in agony about something inside him. He was handsome and I admired him. He was good friends with a boy who looked like a girl. The one who told me I was gay was good friends with those boys. I was just a boy, not a good-looking boy. I might have liked men then, but not now. And the boy who said I was gay was one of our travelling companions. Maybe he accepted me as a person. Pupils at school didn’t care either way about a person’s character. I think they would react differently now because things are different now than they used to be.

There was a girl who spent some occasion with me, she was my friend since we were 5 or 6 years old and she was the same age. Mother had a friend who had a girl the same age as me. We went to a primary school together for the first time we went with mothers. Mother likes to control people’s minds, but only children. Things like she said to a girl, you would like to marry my son, right? Or mother said to me, you want to marry that girl, right? A crazy mother. We didn’t even know what marriage meant. I didn’t even know when the girl liked me, but something happened in high school on a blackboard. The words “I like you” with someone’s graffiti. “You” was not exactly a word. It was my nickname written on a blackboard. I thought the girl wrote I like you when she was sitting next to me in high school. I’m sure it was her words. Did I say anything back, no way, I’m like a sculpture, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t say anything. But we were innocent and ignorant.

There were separate ways to classmates and a future coming towards me, and this time I might never see my classmates again. In Shibetsu, when you finish high school, there are no schools for the next level. I bought a book with the names of vocational schools. And I thought, what kind of school would suit me? I didn’t know what to do. I chose two schools that I thought I might have to go to. I visited them in Sapporo city. They were a car mechanic and an electrician. Both schools were so old, it’s like forty years old buildings. I took a whole day to visit them and went to a hotel to sleep at night. I imagined what’s going to happen to me in my next future if I go to these two with my fears. But I have to study for the next two years. When I came home, my mother told me, “You don’t have to go to those two schools, I’ve found a school for you”. What kind of mother would tell me that? Where is my will here? I spent a whole day looking at schools and you said what? Who am I here? And without asking me, you found a school for me? My jaw dropped. Who are you? She said the computer coding era was coming, you should go and learn computer coding. She was right about computer coding coming, but she ignored my will as if it was meaningless.

What do you think my response was? Nothing. Where did she get that school? The next two years were hell. I didn’t know every pupil, it’s the next level of anxiety than high school. I was so afraid to talk to anyone that I would freeze up in every class. I couldn’t see their eyes. I lost myself and went mad. A few months later, I left Sapporo city, took a train and tried to kill myself in Tomakomai city. I walked around everywhere trying to kill myself, and it was at night. I cried a lot, so sad, and couldn’t kill myself because I was so afraid of killing myself. I made a phone call to my home from a telephone box. I think my father answered my call. I said I tried to kill myself and I couldn’t, could you come and get me? I cried. It was more than five hours from Shibetsu to Tomakomai, he came to pick me up and went to Sapporo city. I don’t remember what we talked about on the way to Sapporo city, but my father and I talked about something. I think my father couldn’t understand why I did like this. I started to go to school again with nothing but anxiety.

In each classroom, there was a teacher in charge of the students, and my homeroom teacher believed that someone trustworthy was needed to take care of me. I think I had two pupils. I only remember one of them, but they were afraid of me, so I don’t really remember if we had any conversations between us or not. I just remember that we walked together all the way to the room I lived in. I can sense that they were afraid of me. I can understand how walking with a scary stranger could make them uncomfortable. And the following year I lost myself again. This time I went to Muroran, really ready to kill myself. I walked around everywhere and found a place to kill myself. It was a dock. I lay down and looked at the night sky and saw stars. I had the blade of a cutter knife. I put the blade on my wrist. I could cut my wrist, it might not hurt, I could cut, cut, cut, and the thought of pain made me afraid to cut my wrist. I couldn’t do it again. I failed. I cried again. It was so hard to live my life. I cried and called home again from a phone box. My mother answered the phone and I think she said something. I don’t remember what she said because it didn’t ring a bell, but I just remember that she was worried about me. I spoke to my father again, but this time it takes more than six or seven hours from Shibetsu to Muroran. My father cannot come to pick me up. He told my teacher about me and the teacher came to pick me up at dawn.

I was a nuisance to everyone who had anything to do with me. The teacher took me to a place called ‘Cape Chikiu’. It was a cliff near the sea from which you can see the horizon. From there you can see the horizon and feel that the earth is round. But I couldn’t feel anything. I just stood there for no reason. I guess the teacher thought it would heal my heart. On the highway on the way to Sapporo, we never had a conversation as far as I can remember. I just can’t remember. The teacher told my parents that he thought I should see a psychosomatic doctor. We went to see a doctor at the university hospital. The doctor gave me five or seven minutes to talk about my feelings, then wrote me a prescription and said I could go now. The doctor gave me pills to take three times a day, after meals, to help me mentally and one pill to take before bed. I had insomnia. That pills did not work, and the doctor gave me another pill, which still did not work. I asked the doctor this medicine did not work and if he could give me something better, he told me to take the medicine he would give me. Nothing helped. Only the sleeping pills worked.

My mother came to Sapporo and found a flat near the Sapporo train station to live with her. It was much better to have someone with me than to be alone. I had shown no signs of wanting to kill myself to anyone. But I could see from her face that she liked being away from her husband. And I finished school, which I did not want to go to. Most of the students at the coding school got jobs, but I was not getting a job. There was a gap between when I didn’t work and when I did, and I have small memories of that time. I stole a music CD from a small shop and ran away. I still don’t know why I did that, I walked past the shop and it suddenly occurred to me to go in and steal a CD. Did I get excited? No, I just remember my heart was pounding. I don’t even remember who released the music CD, and I didn’t really want that CD. Then we moved to another flat. This flat was big enough for the three of us. I remember that my father and mother argued and my father said it was not a good idea for him to live with me. My father had a sufficient income. But my mother wanted to work to live with me, and her real reason was that she didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as her husband. She never told me, but I knew.

My father said he was able to support his family and earn enough money. You don’t have to work for that. That was true. My father was a bad man for my mother and brother. He couldn’t stop her from moving to that place. When I was twenty-one years old. I had several part-time jobs. But most of my time was spent playing video games, known as Nintendo’s first home video game console. I played every day because I felt like I was in a safe zone and I was afraid to go outside. So, I played video games like a fool. Because I liked it? Yes, I did. I would wake up in the morning and play video games again. You can tell I was stupid and doing stupid things.

When I was in my fifties, I found out why all the doctors were so cold to me. My mother once wanted to go to the doctor with me to see how I would talk to the doctor. We went to the doctor’s office and my mother wanted to talk to the doctor alone. I think what she told the doctor was that I was a selfish and childish person who irritates my mother by doing all the stupid things I want to do every day. If I was a normal person, I would understand, but I wasn’t. I suffered in every day. Couldn’t you understand that? But I knew that her mind was like a physically mature child, unable to understand the feelings and thoughts of others. I wish she had a higher IQ, but maybe her low IQ and ignorance helped her. She was insensitive, so she couldn’t think or feel from others, so she didn’t have to worry about things she didn’t need to. Every doctor I had just given me a prescription after a minute and then gave me a blank stare and told me I could go.

I was in my thirties and insisted on talking to the doctor, but the doctor got angry and said I was being selfish. You know, you’re spoiled, so don’t talk to me like that. Is that what doctors do? A doctor who didn’t care about my fears, who only gives me a minute or two of his time, and who starts writing prescriptions as soon as I walk into his office. But I was spoilt, yes. Based on my mother’s story and treated me like that, how does that help me? Why did the doctor believe my mother’s story? Where am I, who am I, where did my life in my thirties go? None of the doctors could help me, they just gave me medicine. I have lived alone since I was fourteen-years old. Japanese doctors might disagree with me.

When I was twenty-one, my mother did not know how to cure my mind and tried to do so by making me join a cult. They wanted me to join their cult, so I observed their religious meetings from distant and watched them speak on stage. I heard their stories of how much better their lives had become as a result of believing in their religion. I felt a strange enthusiasm from them. I did not immediately say I wanted to join their religion. Then they brought up the subject of wanting me and my mother to come back to their meetings. So, we went. And guess what my mother said? ‘This is a wonderful and inspiring experience. you should enter the religion immediately’. My answer was no. They took me to meetings several times, but I never changed my mind. Because I felt they had a strange enthusiasm. They still exist in this country as a big organized religion. I called them a cult, but in this country, they are called a religion. I always said no. I was not wrong with that idea. If I had joined their cult, my life would have been much more complicated and painful than it is now.

I lived with my brother and my mother. I really wanted a motorcycle, so I asked my father to buy one for me and he said yes, even though it was very expensive. I told my father I would return the money he gave me to buy it. But I was going to. Shit. My brother worked at a petrol station and bought a car. My mother bought it for him. My mother told me about that car twenty years later. I got a job when I was twenty-one or two, but that didn’t mean I was finally an adult. I was still a child, and I was afraid of people from the age of fourteen. But I had to work in Tokyo.

I was overwhelmed by the city of Tokyo. Maybe I could do something with computer programming. That’s what I thought at first. My first job was managing mainframe computers and my boss was very cold towards me. My boss seemed to doubt whether I had any intelligence and told me not to do anything. He just instructed me to watch what he was doing in the office. He then left the company he worked for after a year, leaving me alone in the mainframe computer room. I had to carry this burden. I knew nothing about computers. But the company helped me. But I was still in charge of that room.

Two years later I got another boss. He was kind and helpful. He taught me programming from scratch. He was patient. And he got me out of the mainframe computer job. Which was strange doing two things. I fear people, and I had to work. But the doctor told me not to quit my job, but to work. The doctor didn’t explain why I had to do that. But I understand that it was part of the treatment, but it didn’t work for me. My boss likes to drink beer. My boss and colleagues drink beer at the weekend, after work. I don’t like beer, but I had no way of saying no. we drank every week. I couldn’t say I couldn’t drink because my boss liked it. But it’s okay because my feelings towards alcohol have diminished.

A new project came up at work and my boss and I worked together. I don’t know how my boss felt about it, but he taught me everything he knew. I was useless, I had no brains, and normally I don’t think anyone would have given me this job, I think it was a year or two, but it was very rewarding. We had business trip a lot and it was like travelling. Another project came up at work. It was a programming job in Japanese, which was unique. The computer was made by Casio. There was a young, talented programmer who had to teach us programming, and he was sent by the company to do this job. We spent weeks on this job, sleeping in the office for a week.

He was a passionate man. He used to lose his temper with me and I told him privately that I saw a psychiatrist every two weeks. He changed and became kinder to me. But you can’t use these situations as excuses. I was just making excuses and running away from a problem I didn’t like. When he reads this story, he will know who this person was. I will never forget you.

I worked many hours, I earned money. And I got the money. I decided to buy a car. I didn’t have enough money to keep the car and I didn’t have a plan for the future. It was a loan plan I could not afford. I asked my father for financial help. It was stupid. But he agreed and helped me. I didn’t even know what money meant. I hated money, but there was no excuse for what I was doing. But it took me years to understand what money meant. I used to call in sick call a lot. After a while, nobody answered my calls. I didn’t even understand what work meant.

But what would we be like if there was no puberty? I am not a psychologist, and would a psychologist know what kind of person I would be? If they know, why didn’t they tell me anything about what would happen to me? But don’t worry, I’m still alive. But somewhere in this world, they are struggling to stay alive. Are they dead, are they still in progress, are they in a mental hospital somewhere? I don’t know. My cousin on my mother’s side became mentally ill after he joined the army, and according to my mother, after being bullied in the army, he quit his job and returned to his family home. I used to see him when I was still ill. He was very different from me. He was different from when we were students. At first, he wasn’t so strange. But the more I met him, the worse he got. I never wanted to see him again. Who did this to him? Did the doctors do it, did he do it himself, or did someone else do it? Some people say that what comes around goes around to you. What did he do? He was a bad man, but not the worst.

I don’t like to think about these things, but I can’t help but wonder if these things have something to do with God’s will. Is this God’s will? Is this his punishment for what he did? Whose responsibility, is it? I know that life is not fair.

It was a new project when I was twenty-four years old, and this time I was in charge of it and I would meet with the client and ask them what they wanted to build. My company thought it would be a good idea to do this new project based on the program code we had built in the past. Before this job came along, I liked to build complex programs. My boss was short-staffed and asked me to teach someone how to make program code, but he was older than me and rude. He was a man who talked before he thought. He was frustrated with me. My boss said I should firmly teach him the program code. And I did. One evening we celebrated Christmas at work. The man I was teaching told me I was a ‘Hakuchi’. Hakuchi means extremely stupid or a bad version of stupid.

Right. He thought I didn’t have a head. He could say that. I was hurt. The new job was very hard. It didn’t match the previous program code at all. I wanted to match my old job, but the client wouldn’t let me. So, I had to create a new one from scratch. In my previous work, my boss separated the easy jobs from the hard ones and gave me the easy ones. And now I had to create everything myself. I looked through the code of the previous program that my boss had made, from start to finish. Some of it looked usable. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make one that the client’s requirements. But I had to make something that met the client’s requirements anyway.

For a while I do not mention my interpersonal phobia, but it was still a phobia. I wasn’t afraid of people I had spoken to, but I was afraid of people I didn’t know, 99 per cent of people, and less than one per cent of people I didn’t. Even at work, I was afraid of people I had never spoken to. I had too much on my hands. All I was doing for the client was complicated program codes that didn’t work. I don’t remember if I gave up or tried to kill myself. All I remember is giving up and telling my boss that I was broken and wanted to quit my job. I was lazy person. My boss said he would take over my job and I should give him my resignation.  I felt like I was free of the job and five years of work had gone to waste. I was lazy, I was afraid of people. I was in Sapporo in a hospital that I couldn’t remember where I was in.

A few months later, my boss came to see me and asked if I could tell him about the codes I had built. I didn’t want to remember anything, so I told my boss I didn’t remember anything, sorry. He left the hospital and a few months later I heard that my boss had left the company we worked for. I felt that I had given my boss a reason to leave the company because of me. If he were alive, would he forgive me? He likes to drink beer and I don’t want to think about that. And there was one person I didn’t mention, he was my colleague. We were on the same team because we had the same boss, although we worked on different projects. He was kind, considerate and open. He was a good man, and I hope he still is.

I don’t remember how long I was in hospital, but I went back to my parents’ house to recuperate for a while and then returned to Sapporo city to look for work. I found a part-time job, but my father didn’t want to and money was still tight. Becoming a computer programmer would have relieved my father. But I could not find such a job. And the fact that I quit my job for mental reasons also affected my job search. In the past in Japan, it was difficult to find a job because of mental illness. People with mental illness are not people, but a burden and a disgrace to their families.

However, Sapporo’s population had already exceeded one million. There was no need to exchange greetings, even if they were neighbors. I could see a psychiatrist because my neighbors were strangers, and I did not have to explain this to them out of shame. Besides, my father did not like the fact that I was working part-time and he was worried about my future. My father had been doing the same job for over 30 years, while I was a programmer for five years and then worked part-time. It is understandable that my father thought I had no future.

My brother was earning a good amount of money from his job and had a girlfriend in Sapporo. I made the mistake of thinking it would be nice to live near my brother, but he didn’t like it. I was twenty-six when I met her. One day we were playing cards in my brother’s room. His girlfriend seemed nice to me, but I could sense from her eyes, her words and her body language that she did not like me. I became sensitive to how people felt and thought of me and for years, from the age of fourteen, I unconsciously observed and studied the movements, words and body language of everyone I met. Her face seemed to smile, but I thought she hated. Eyes are the windows to the soul.

Many people from overseas may know about the Japanese culture but cannot understand the true feelings of the Japanese people. However, I have been able to understand them. I often misunderstood their feelings in the early stages, and I still do, although not as much as I used to. But it was an achievement that took me more than 30 years of my life to learn. I don’t like to observe people, but I can’t help but observe them. It’s like a habit. When you brush your teeth, which way do you brush first? In the same way, I was doing it unconsciously.

There is a strange story about when I was a boy between the ages of eight and twelve. My aunt told my mother that I looked more mature than the other children, and she wondered what sort of man I would become.

Later, when I was twenty-six years old and unable to use my car insurance due to late monthly payments, I was involved in a car accident. It was a red light at an intersection and I was going straight into the intersection, but the other driver turned right on the red light and I rammed into his car. He got out of his car, called someone and got a witness on his side. The intersection was small, so it was easy to go through the red light in a couple of seconds. When I went to the police station to report the car accident, my memory was hazy, but the officer asked me what was the traffic light was and I said it was red. My car insurance was not available and there was nothing I could do, so I asked my father for help. During the settlement with the other driver’s insurance company, my father was present and determined that I was at fault for causing the car accident. My father paid the insurance company compensation for the accident I caused.

A few weeks later, my father told me to give my car to my brother for his work, as it was old and had too many miles on it. My brother has a good job and I am the black sheep of the family. His girlfriend complained to my brother that my car smelled so bad that she couldn’t spend a second in it. A few days later, my brother told me not to come to his flat because it was annoying. I knew it was his girlfriend’s idea, but I said yes. She was a mean woman. I thought my brother was no longer my brother. He was a stranger. He was worried about money and made her promise to get a job and earn a living. Otherwise, they would not be able to keep that flat. She bathed twice a day, drank, didn’t work and spent her time doing whatever she wanted. He chose her over me.

At the time, my father was worried about me and told me on the landline to get a decent job. Sometimes we argued. My father and I didn’t talk much. Partly because I was mentally ill and partly because I was taciturn. I didn’t know what my father thought, how he acted or what he liked. I still regret that I should have talked to my father more. My father wanted me to work for his company, but I refused. My father was turning fifty-five years old this year and would retire, so he had asked his colleagues and bosses to help me get a job at his company. Bad things only happen at times like this.

At around 6am, my mother called me and told me that my father had been hit by a car and died. I could hear my mother crying on my mobile phone. But for my mother, who hated my father, his death must have been good news. When I was still a student and in my early twenties, I once wondered if my mother wished her husband had died. I couldn’t believe my mother’s words that my father had died, but at the same time I was muttering in my mind, what to do, what to do. I called my brother many times, but he never answered. When I rang the intercom at my brother’s apartment, he got angry and said, what do you want? When I told him that our father had been hit by a car and died, he said, ‘What? ‘. I think he called his mother because he couldn’t believe it. I don’t remember if he let me in or not, but he had my car and we were going home to my parents together.

The next day we drove to my hometown. My father lay in a unique room, his face covered with a traditional Japanese white cotton fabric. Everyone was already there, 90% of whom were my father’s family. My father was despised by my mother’s family for being violent towards his wife, but in fact my mother was only pretending to be a victim. This was because my mother had offended my father by pointing out his faults. Things like he was bald and short. That was the cause of my parents’ fights. Nobody knows the truth except me. Does this father deserve to die? I don’t think so. Does he deserve to be treated like this mother’s family? I do not think so. When we were young, my father had some happy times, but after that his life was a nightmare.

My cousins and I discussed the cause of my father’s death, but all we knew was that he was drunk and walking on a red-lit pedestrian crossing at night when he was hit by a speeding car and hit his head on the ground. His brain was out of his ears. How fast could his car hit him and blow my father far away to his death? At one point, my brother said to the funeral attendees that we had nothing against the driver. He said ‘we’. He told them to agree with me in front of everyone, without any prior discussion with me.

When I was about fifty-two, he told me the truth. My brother had to make a good impression on his mother. He had to pretend to care about his family. That was his plan, so we had to make a short trip and stay in a hotel. Everyone else was asleep and we were the only two awake. He told me the driver was his friend’s brother, but I ignored him and pretended not to listen. If he had told the truth at the funeral, he would have undoubtedly been accused by his paternal family. My mother knew this and wanted to avoid telling the truth. Because it would be more presentable to those around them. That’s how I think about it.

Additional information for readers My brother had a daughter and she seemed to like me more than her father. She wanted to be a cartoonist one day. A few months before she was still applying to high school, I asked her if she wanted to go to university. She told me she hadn’t even gone to high school yet. At breakfast in the hotel, her answer was ‘not yet’. I looked at her drawing and said it wasn’t even art. A few months later I heard she was studying hard to get into a good high school. And now I think she hates me. Life is a strange thing.

They wanted to retain their dignity from the people, but my mother always looked down on them from behind. And my father’s family knew that my mother hated them. So, my mother and brother had to save their own asses. It would be very admirable if it were true to say that there are no hard feelings. Basically, my brother and mother betrayed my father and me. Even though we were given everything from one person. People like me like the truth, but they didn’t.

In Japan, funerals last for two days, but we spent the evening and the morning of the first day at the temple with family and close relatives. My cousin was younger than me but older, sociable and a primary school teacher. We hadn’t spent much time with my father’s side of the family, so they were a bit of outsiders. We kept the candles lit and my cousin, his brother’s girlfriend and I spent all night drinking and playing cards. She was nice to me, even though I knew she didn’t like me. Her acting was perfect. She wouldn’t have known that I was aware of it. And no one could have known that she hated me.

The next day I was hungover and embarrassed. In the last moments of the funeral, I cried, because my mother cried when we were putting the nails in the coffin. What my mother said to me afterwards was very wicked. She said she wanted to show them that she was crying. So, my mother was not sad or anything. I still don’t understand. Why did she do that? Did she hate her father’s family? And did she use her husband’s funeral to take revenge on her paternal family? At least my brother might know why. I was the black sheep of the family, and they didn’t think I needed to know anything. It was a shitty show.

After the funeral we received a reply from the driver’s insurance company stating that the driver was unilaterally at fault of the father and that no compensation was required. Therefore, we had to file a claim with the liability insurance. The father’s company had an insurance department that helped us with the liability insurance claim. He took advantage of the tragedy and tried to make money from the insurance claim. It was half of the money we had. My brother found out about it. I think my mother told him about the insurance policy my mother had taken out. And we cancelled it. After receiving the insurance money, my brother told me that she should have received all the insurance money. My brother’s decision was everything. I was nobody, I was the black sheep of the family. I followed my brother’s orders.

I witnessed his power at my father’s funeral. Readers will know that I hated money. I wanted the insurance money, but that was a bad idea. A few months later his girlfriend got pregnant and he came to my flat and told me that he always wore a condom when he had sex with her. So, I thought that she had punctured the condom and got pregnant. She wanted to marry him, but he did not comply. Then she got pregnant. So, I think she got pregnant and gave him a reason to marry her. And they got married.

I was in need of money and thought it would be better to go back to my hometown. And it was a wrong decision, thinking only about money. The next ten years were dark times. For the first year, my job was easy and I had good friends at work. I enjoyed every day, but I was still afraid of people and had to go to the doctor to get medicine that didn’t work. And they told me to come back every two weeks to get the medicine. During that year I had a good time with my new friends, even though they were younger than me at work. One of them was a very good friend of mine and a nice guy. I think he thought I was retarded and decided to be friends to help me out.

I haven’t had friends since I was fourteen, so I think it’s okay to call him a friend. He cared about other people. We used to hang out after work and after my shift. He always took the lead with me and played with him and his girlfriend. I don’t remember what exactly we did, but it was peaceful. That time was not very long.

One winter, I met an acquaintance from secondary school in a bar. It was no coincidence that the owner of the bar was also an acquaintance from secondary school. A small town where everyone knew everything. The bar was near my place of work. I think I went to the bar because I wanted to meet people I knew. I wanted to show myself to the people from secondary school and let them know that I had changed. Part of me had healed, but I was still broken and not a responsible person. In secondary school we never spoke. And he asked me if I wanted to get a new job that paid well.

He introduced me to a new job and I said goodbye to my new friends at my then workplace. It was the beginning of another fate, and a grim one at that. My new workplace was a bookkeeper, a dark and quiet place, and my new boss wasn’t too bad, but the owner always worked in the back corner of the office, where you could see his desk. He was always angry. The pay was good, but the work environment was bad. And I didn’t enjoy any of it. My only friend was a guy from secondary school, who liked to drink every weekend at his favorite bar with other guys from the same secondary school and the same company. They were nice guys to call friends and to be around. But as I didn’t like drinking, it was a pain for me to have a drink every week.

And I didn’t want to spend money on drinks. What other choice would I have had? They considered me a friend. If I refused to drink with them, I would be betraying them. After an hour and a half or two hours of drinking, I always pretended to be asleep. We always went to the same bar and there was a woman of the same age who worked there, but I didn’t even know her because I had never met her before. She was an old friend of theirs. Sometimes we would have a good time together, other than drinking at the bar or going to the beach, but because they were old friends, the woman at the bar was always with us. She was beautiful, I liked her, I wanted her to be my girlfriend. Did I love her? No, I didn’t know what love was.

We had a satellite dish at home and I liked to watch foreign films with Japanese subtitles. I liked Marisa Tomei and actresses like that, so I used to watch movies a lot. She was the object of my admiration.

I was still mentally ill and I think my friends thought there was something wrong with me. Was it too late or too early to want this woman as a female friend? Or maybe I should have done nothing to her. I gave her something at the door, and she thanked me. Still, she was kind to me. Even if I made her feel awkward. Awkward friendship with a friend About a year later, a turning point came. Because the company asked me to be the CAD input personnel for the houses.

Because the company I worked for was a timber factory. So, I was put in charge of CAD input. You could say it was a promotion. I had no experience in building houses until then. The company already had CAD input personnel in Sapporo, so I was sent to Sapporo for training to learn the skills, but the training period was one or two weeks, which was not enough time to learn as a CAD input personnel. I told the company that my skills were not enough to do this job. Then they brought a carpenter to the company to teach me how to build a house. I understood some of it, but I did not know how to build a house. Then I had to work as a CAD input personnel with no experience.

In this job, pre-cut timber is given to the customer, but as no house is the same, each cut is different and I had to input data for each house to cut the timber. Each house was different, so it was like building a different plastic model each time. If I’d been a carpenter for a few months or a year, that would help me in my job. But this company didn’t give me any experience. So, I had to imagine the building process and put data into it. Of course, the first time I failed. And the second, third and fourth time. All those failures gave me experience, but they didn’t help me much in my job. And it was distressing for me, because by failing I caused damage to the company.

I had two problems. They were interpersonal phobia and making mistakes at work. Even though I made a lot of mistakes, every day a new job came along. And it was me working alone after everyone had left. My mind was worn out by the daily work. Sometimes I had to work on holidays because of delivery deadlines. It was a painful job. I needed a break, but there was no such thing in my job. And they knew that I made a lot of mistakes, so they were never angry at me for my mistakes. But my heart was different and I couldn’t forgive my mistakes. And I thought I was a loser. I used to play video games in my room, which made her angry because she hated video games. Every time I played video games, my mother got angry when she found out I was playing video games. My mother shouted at me as if the devil were shouting at me. I was under a lot of pressure at work and I just wanted to relieve my stress by playing video games. My mother didn’t even understand that I was struggling at work.

She loved and respected her brother who made money. She thinks playing video games is like being a child. And my mother always said I was a child. My mother didn’t even try to understand my heart ache. Every day in my house, she would shout from downstairs that I was a child. Meanwhile, I was in pain at work. My mother never even tried to ask me how I was doing at work. It is not nice for a grown man to call someone childish every day. It’s not a good thing for grown adults to call someone childish every day. Harming someone’s feelings and destabilizing their heart is surprisingly easy. And to deny people their existence. I had no place to calm myself down for ten years. She thinks she is a good adult. She knows nothing about work. I said to her, how come you don’t know anything about work? And she said sarcastically, ‘If you are so smart, you should have become a doctor’. Because things like this continued for ten years, I was mentally cornered by my mother and led a miserable life.

My brother, on the other hand, was an upstanding person, but not me. That’s what my mother thinks. One time, I drove somewhere and tried to kill myself there. I got scared and called my mother to tell her I wanted to kill myself. I was having problems at work and I was desperate. This episode happened twice in ten years and my mother never asked me why I try to commit suicide. That could be wrong, and my mother asked about my suffering, but could not understand. She thought a doctor would help me. In truth, the doctor just gave me a prescription, spent a few seconds in the doctor’s office and told me that my time was up and I could go home. So, what happened? I wasted another ten years of my life.

I was in my early thirties. I decided to get an architect’s license. I thought that if I got this license, I could have a different life. And there was another CAD input personnel in the office, so I asked my boss to give me a job other than CAD input. Then, after work, I was able to go to school to study for the architectural exam. I came home late from school, did my homework, prepared for my next class and studied until after 1am almost every day for almost a year. I didn’t worry about work anymore, and all I could think about was getting my license. Physically it was hard work, but mentally it was easy. I finally got my license. Then I tried to get another job to change my life; I hadn’t had a decent job since my early twenties, so I thought an architect’s license would be good for me.

My boss was furious when I said leave my work, and he said you’re going to regret and he would make sure that I couldn’t get a job. Before I tried to get a license requires experience or some degree. I told my boss that I needed to go to a school to get a degree for the license. There were several schools in Tokyo. And he said there was no need for that and offered to help me make a CV to apply for the exam. And he did. If he hadn’t said that, my life would have been different. It was not the right thing to do, but my boss needed me to ensure the smooth operation of the factory. And I couldn’t say no. In a way, he was right to be angry with me, but he was also wrong. Because if I’d gone to school to get a degree, things would have been different.

After I left the company, I couldn’t get any job that I wanted. I decided to get a carpenter job was working for me because I didn’t know how to build houses process. While I was living a life akin to hell, my brother remarried. His first marriage fell apart in three months, with his wife cheating on him with another man, leading to their divorce. Several years after the divorce, he met someone at his workplace, and I was also invited and attended their wedding. They seemed happy, but I didn’t feel like celebrating their wedding. Because he was no longer my brother. During the wedding, I was smiling all the time, but in my mind, I couldn’t enjoy it at all. I still remember the words he said to me that I was not welcome in his flat.

My mother was still a bad person. She spent money on whatever she wanted and bought a grand piano. She told me she was sad because her husband had died. Was that guilt? What she did to her husband when he was alive was unspeakable. As for my work, I worked as a carpenter for three years and the carpenter’s wingman told me: ‘You should take your work as a carpenter more seriously’. I did not want to be a carpenter, so I quit my job. I wanted to distance myself from my mother because she was nothing but poison to me. I told my mother that I wanted to find a job as an architect in Sapporo, but I didn’t have the money to go to Sapporo.

I was still a bad person who hated money. My mother reluctantly gave me money and allowed me to go to Sapporo. This was a turning point in my life at the age of thirty-seven. I couldn’t find a job I wanted to do, no matter how hard I looked for one. Due to my age and lack of experience, I couldn’t secure a job offer anywhere. When I ran out of money, my mother got fed up and told me to look for something anyway. I became a taxi driver because there was no other company that would give me a job except the taxi company. The company paid for my tuition fees for the driving school. I don’t remember for sure, but there was the first person who got in the taxi and I got very scared and I took him where he wanted to go. And then the second, third and fourth person, after three months, six months, I became less scared.

There is a respected old man at the company I work for, who seems kind, has a loud and clear voice and sometimes taught me about the taxi business, but he was not a nice man at all. One day he overtook my car and picked up someone waiting for a taxi in front of me. Before that happened, I spent two hours desperately looking for someone waiting for a taxi. As a newcomer, I didn’t have many opportunities to pick up passengers in the taxi dispatching job. Everyone in the company thinking he was a great guy. But he wasn’t a great person. So, he didn’t deserve respect. It was obvious why he did. Because he knew the new guy’s number plate, and within three years I wasn’t afraid of people anymore. With a job I didn’t like very much, I stopped being afraid of people. Was this my only option in life?

I wanted to work as an architect, and I decided to leave the company after three years and needed to pay back my tuition fees. I had saved at the time, so I paid the money back. But life is ironic. No company would give me a reply to hire me as an architect. I worked as a temporary worker for a year and then went back to my original company, they were welcomed me back to work as a taxi driver. My financial planning skills were below average compared to most people, and I moved into an apartment where I couldn’t afford the monthly rent. That was a year before the Lehman Brothers collapse, when I was forty-one or two years old.

I no longer dreamed of being an architect. Because I felt old. I wanted to leave proof of my existence in the world. For myself. I wrote down my ideas using Microsoft Word and decided to sell them to an internet service provider. About a year later, part of the idea leaked to some company. I think the people at the internet service provider made fun of me over drinks and spread the idea I had put forward somewhere else. I decided that I couldn’t trust Japanese companies and start studying English on my own with Rosetta Stone when I was forty-two.

After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I ran out of money and could no longer pay the rent on my flat. I struggled for money and asked my mother to help me with some months’ worth of money. It was shameful, because until then I had been able to get by on my own money. Moreover, the company I work for had to lay off drivers due to the Lehman Brothers collapse. The dispatcher would only give me one or two jobs a day and no one would raise their hand to ride in my taxi. I knew that the dispatchers were deliberately giving the job to particular persons. The individual’s name and their daily earnings were listed on the whiteboard. I grew frustrated with it every day, left the company within a year, and joined another taxi company, only to regret my decision to leave that company.

I wish I had never met that person. He was in the same company as me before he was forced to quit. If I hadn’t complained to him about my job, I wouldn’t have quit. I had a dislike for the dispatchers working behind the computers. He mentioned that we didn’t have any reason to complain about the dispatchers since we didn’t have dispatcher jobs. I said I would think about it, and two weeks later he phoned me to say that he had got a job from his company and that I could come soon. And I had to go. He decided on my job on his own, even though I hadn’t clearly said I was going. What I found out was that he had received money from his company for introducing me to his company. This company without the dispatcher jobs made it particularly difficult to make money. From the beginning, I thought it would be nice not to have to bother with the dispatchers, but after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I couldn’t make any money because we didn’t have the dispatcher jobs. I couldn’t even make my monthly apartment payments, which made it even harder to make money. I couldn’t maintain a place to live without asking my mother to make monthly payments.

My decision was only made worse in terms of money. Eventually, my mother bought me a flat because of the money problems. Nevertheless, this continued for five years until the company I used to work for accepted me. I went back to the company I worked for when I was fifty. I thought my life was over. Generally, the age of fifty is the age at which many people are preparing to retire, and have families and grandchildren. I have neither of them. I am a useless person. Then I remembered that my father earned a lot of money and owned a house when he was thirty-eight. I have nothing. The only flat I have been bought by my mother, who inherited the money from my father. But my mother did not even try to build a grave for her husband, which I thought was disrespectful to my father and at the same time I thanked my parents. In a way, it was a sad thank you.

My father liked gardening. But he didn’t spend much money on it. My mother spent money on gardening for her husband. Gardening required people and costs money. My mother said that gardening would make my father proud of our home in heaven. I didn’t think so. Begging my mother for money was my way of getting back at her. I did that for my father’s sake. I also used it as an excuse for myself, but never once mentioned it. In both my previous and current jobs, my mother and I argued about everything – about me, money issues, my childish behavior, etc. My mother never once visited me at my previous apartment. My mother doesn’t want to witness the kind of person I am and the kind of person I’ve turned into. If I could not, please her, she would consider me a failure. I was a person who worried about the future of Japan. I had a habit of thinking about things other than money. My mother thinks of me as a five-year-old child. I complained to my mother about my brother, whom she respected. His ex-wife was an alcoholic who died of pancreatic cancer, but she remarried another man, had two children and my brother’s son lived with her. And my nephew had become a man without a family. It was because he was not permitted to live with his father. However, when I asked my nephew about his father, he replied via SMS that his father came to see him when he was in eighth grade. When my mother and his ex-wife’s mother were discussing their relief at her passing during the funeral, the little child had a look of wonder on his face. We went on three family short trips, but my brother said he would not invite me on the family trip. I felt the same way, so I told my mother that I would not take part in the first trip. My mother then strongly insisted me to join the trip with the family. And I did. That was the only time his son took part in the family trip. My nephew told his grandmother that he and I were very much alike. I wanted to deny it, but I saw that he seemed lonely. I felt lonely myself. Neither of us wanted to be with our families. When the photograph was taken, there were three of them. That was his family. They decided to take a photo of the four of them, when I frowned. I was heartbroken by the conversation between his sister and her brother because I thought they hadn’t introduced their daughter as her older brother. She was still in primary school and her brother was in high school.

The brother lets his son to live in their house instead of him. The son then moved in with his grandmother, who had lost her daughter. I told my mother that my brother was a cold-blooded man, hence the family trip, and I donated money to those who lost their homes and families in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I cried for them because I felt like I had lost my family. Afterwards, I returned to my former workplace and did a lot of dispatch work. Eventually, I was able to earn enough to get my name in the top five on the whiteboard, so I didn’t have to worry about money to start my first year. The only problem was an acquaintance who liked to eat meat cooked on a Hibachi, he did not consider me a friend and I was a source of information for him. He just liked the information I gave him. Then here’s the respected old man. Because if the acquaintance did not say ‘thank you’ to the old man on his mobile phone, the old man would not give the acquaintance a job. He was not happy about that. The old man only gives work to others when he cannot do his own work. This was the old man’s way of treating others in the company. This is my view on why the old man gave his job to others, and perhaps I am right.

Normally, when people reach old age, they retire and enjoy life, but not him. An acquaintance asked him why he did not retire, and I replied that old people cannot retire because he loves his work. The acquaintance told his other colleagues, who went around saying that I had said that the old man could not quit because he loved his work. After work, in the office where I calculated and deposited the money I earned each day, I heard the acquaintance telling other colleagues what I had said. If this friend used my words to criticize the old man, it was my fault, not his. He had thought that far. I believed him, but he used my words to betray me. I thought he was a kind of friend, but that was my misunderstanding. I knew he was not an honest man. I never expected him to betray me so easily and use it against the old man.

The old man was furious that I had criticized his work. He took it as a bad thing, even though I had never said anything bad about him. He then criticized me for not saying hello to anyone and said that was disrespectful to old people. He did not mention my name, but he was obviously talking about me. He didn’t deserve anyone’s respect and it was wrong to ask people for respect.　After all, there were three days a week, if not every day, when I didn’t have the dispatch jobs. There was another issue with the dispatch jobs. Sometimes, I had to pick up a customer who was far away, but only spent two minutes in the taxi, or I would spend 15 minutes picking up someone who also only spent two minutes in the taxi. As these jobs went on, I became convinced that this old man was behind them. In fact, there is a car park outside the company and one day the old dispatcher parked next to my car and seemed to be exchanging text messages with someone every day. He hadn’t arrived at work yet, but he was texting all the time. He looked very surprised when he realized I was there in my car sitting in a seat next to his car.

The busiest days were Fridays and Saturdays, when I was the only one free. For me the cruelty was even worse, it was like torture. The dispatchers seemed to enjoy it. From then on it was hell. I didn’t commit any crimes, but I was burdened with meaningless burdens. For the first year I just threw myself into work, but for the next two years I distracted myself by playing video games after work and watching TV dramas before going to bed at night. I hated Fridays and Saturdays. On both days there were no dispatch jobs, only other people were busy.

My working hours were from 8am to 2am, which meant two days’ worth of work at once. As soon as my shift was over, I went home and went to bed, waking up in my room at 9am. Sometimes my day off was the day after work, and the day after that. However, I was frustrated and would buy something as if it were an addiction. I was unconsciously buying things without thinking. Looking back, I was mentally ill, but I didn’t even realize I was mentally ill and it took me years to realize. During that time, my dispatch jobs were limited, but the pay was not bad. However, I am not stupid, and I don’t claim to be smart. I am not an idiot. I suffered from mental illness for over 20 years, was free from it for 10 years, but relapsed again.

This time, however, it was not fear of people, but suffering that consumed me. I became a shopaholic. My debts mounted. I kept buying things. And buying things didn’t make me feel better. I just wasted money. Sometimes, the dispatchers would assign me only one or two dispatch tasks, and there were also times when I had no dispatch tasks throughout the day. The dispatchers liked to give me ugly jobs that nobody liked, and there were areas where people of bad character lived, and the dispatcher gave me those places. I would go to places where those people lived and wait for more than 10 minutes to get a taxi. There was no end to this kind of work. If I took on one job, another similar job would come along.

However, I couldn’t earn enough money despite dedicating a significant amount of time, due to the meager compensation for 2-3 hours of work. These three hours are very important, because most of the money I could earn would come from this timeframe. I think the supervisors and dispatchers intended to make me disposable. It was the old man’s intention, in my opinion. Besides, I repeatedly refused to press the accept button on the screen of the dispatch system attached to a GPS navigator. Because if I didn’t, I would not be able to make enough money. They didn’t care that I was suffering or that I have any problems. I am a human being. But they treat me like rubbish. This unending suffering persisted for over a year or more, and I wasn’t even aware that I had a mental illness. I felt distrustful of the Japanese people, who do whatever they want without remorse. Since 2010, Japanese morals have collapsed.

Originally, I disliked Japanese people, but it has made me more hate the Japanese people. I used to worry about the future of the Japanese people. They have found themselves in a downward economic spiral, and they are experiencing the resulting outcomes, which they deserve. My eyes were looking at the world, not at Japan.

I suffered for two years and I sent a letter to the company I work for telling my side of the story. In that letter, I lodged a complaint about the dispatchers and described them as an overweight woman and an elderly man. A day later, on my day off, I received a phone call from the company informing me that I was fired immediately, as I was told it was because I had written negative things about them. They said that constitutes dismissal. I thought that didn’t count as dismissal. I wrote a letter about my childhood, and they thought I was psychotic. Are you fucking kidding me? You’re the one who’s sick. They told me that they would explain why I was dismissed when I arrived at the company. When I arrived at the office, my boss, who was over 70 years old, showed me into a conference room.

They said it was my fault and decided to dismiss me for my language and for not following dispatch orders. When I asked which work rules I had breached, he replied, ‘I don’t know any work rules’. So, he talked to his superior and asked if there were any work rules. Yes, they had not even seen if I had actually breached the work rules. He then brought me a book of work rules. He said I had breached two sections of the regulations. And he spoke. ‘I don’t care which section you broke. You can’t just work here anymore’. Are you sick? Can’t you even speak Japanese properly? I asked him why the counts on Fridays and Saturdays for the dispatch jobs were so low. He told me. ‘It just happened to be out of GPS range where you were’ Liar. They killed me twice. The first time by the dispatcher and the second time by firing me. He told me they would give me a month’s salary for immediate dismissal. They also acted like big shots, saying they would give me more than enough. My words did not break the law in any way, and it was only right to say that breaking the law in terms of disobeying dispatch orders was the only thing. Are you stupid? I suffered for two years, was mentally broken, and on top of that, I was fired.

But I still had the strength to fight them off. I already had a backup plan in place in case something happened to me. There were cameras in the taxi record any incidents that might occur between the driver and passengers. This was to deal with arguments, violence and illegal behavior. I was driving an empty taxi, talking to myself about how stupid the company was, deliberately talking to the on-board camera so that I would be recorded as wanting to quit my job. I used the same words every time and spoke to myself in the car. I knew they had taken out the flash drive recorded on the in-car camera and were looking at it. They seemed to do it every time I got out of the taxi and returned to my flat. It was against the law. I had them record me using specific language about the company and how I quit. It was insurance in case I was fired.

They would be digging their own graves if they used the same words I recorded. The day I went to the company, the man used the exact words I had recorded in the car and told me I was fired. That’s when I was convinced. What I was feeling was not wrong. They had secretly watched the recorded footage. And I covertly recorded conversations between the company and myself using an IC recorder for use in the dispute. I lodged a complaint with the public authority dealing with unfair dismissal. The agency told me that they will send a letter to the company, asking the company to come to the agency and present the company’s perspective.

A few days later, I received a letter from the department in charge of my case, telling me that a hearing had been scheduled and that I should come to the public authority dealing with unfair dismissal. That day was designated for both parties to present their arguments, and for a lawyer chosen at random to determine which side was correct. I knew I would win the dispute as I had already prepared for it before I was dismissed. I recorded the audio, but I couldn’t predict what problems might arise, so I transcribed all the recorded conversations onto paper. That helped on the day of the hearing. The agency told me that I could not use the recorded audio files because they were only for listening. I submitted a piece of paper with a transcription of the recording and was told that this paper would be fine. We did not see each other on this day. The only people we met were the lawyer and the agency.

At the first hearing, the company explained their side of the story and the agency told me to tell my side to the lawyer. The lawyer said the company claimed they had done nothing wrong. I already knew what they would say. I told my lawyer that they should have warned me about not following the dispatch orders as they were in a position to supervise our work, but when I went back to the company, they did not say anything. I told the lawyer that they had not done the job they were supposed to do. The lawyer said the person in charge wanted time to talk to the company, and after waiting for 15 minutes, the company replied and the lawyer asked me if I would accept their offer as the company would pay me 200,000 yen. This was not a court of law. It is a public service that handles disputes between employers and former employees, and the amounts paid are almost always low. In handling your own case, you can get a quick resolution at no cost, but with the same effect as a court case.

I told my lawyer that I did not think this amount is enough for what they had done and that I needed more. He replied that he would not pay me more than 200,000 yen. I thought quickly and told the lawyer about the damage they had done to me. He replied that it was 250,000 yen. I said that I need another 50,000 yen. I also informed the lawyer that they had covertly reviewed the recorded video files in the car. The representative replied that he needed time to discuss the matter with the company. They said they would pay me another 50,000 yen. I won the dispute with the company that fired me. The amount was not enough, but winning against the company was enough for me. It was 26 February, and I was fired from my job in mid-December 2019.

I had to find another job outside of taxi driving and move on. But I was unaware that my heart was broken as two years of abuse had deeply affected me. I had to apply for admission to a vocational training school operated by the government and prepare for the entrance exam, but the timing was terrible. The coronavirus was a global epidemic at the time. The exams were in February, but many people were unable to take the entrance exams because of COVID-19 infection. I chose the subject of building management, mainly because the exam guide said it was suitable for my age. There were several other subjects, but not all of the candidates passed, despite the small number of candidates. Around March, I received a letter with the exam results and an invitation to apply for admission in April.

For six months, he had to study various subjects while receiving unemployment benefits. The studies themselves were not very difficult and could be done by anyone, but classes were suspended for two weeks due to the coronavirus epidemic. Each student had to stay at home and endure the crisis of the coronavirus epidemic. The interrupted classes were never resumed. I thought, ‘How unlucky can I get’. Once classes resumed, life felt normal again, but the job search did not work. There were few job opportunities, many age restrictions, and it was impossible to even get an interview. The exam guide said that 80% of graduates would get a job, but the coronavirus changed everything: instead of 80%, it was less than 10%. Moreover, with the age limit, I thought it was impossible to get a job; after studying for five months, I decided to leave school and start looking for a job. It was clear that pursuing a career in building management was a futile endeavor.

Everything seemed to favor the young. Even though a teacher at the vocational training school said it was the kind of work that people close to retirement would do. I ended up working as a temporary worker, where something extraordinary happened. The first week was a study session and at the end of each day there was a recognition test with a reference book. On the second day someone got a perfect score of 100. The staff member who was explaining the job said, ‘Let’s all work hard to’. On the third day, about three fellow staff members sat behind me and they were talking the whole time and I couldn’t concentrate. In their conversation, it seemed that someone had scored 100 points. They said that person must have cheated. Rather than cheat, we just looked at the reference book and wrote down the answers, so we couldn’t have done that score badly. But they were fellow staff members who did not even understand it. And two other colleagues agreed with him.

This time it was not a study group, but a real job. Our job was to explain to the public what they didn’t understand. I was quite nervous. While I was doing the actual work, I noticed that the man who used to sit behind me during the study sessions kept staring at me. He was definitely looking for an opportunity to make a mistake or get angry with me. On my third day at work, I was suddenly given my notice dismissal. It was evident that he was targeting me. There was another person, about 70 years old, who gave a worse explanation, but he was unharmed. After that I moved from one job to another, but it was not stable. I was just a temporary worker. Around November 2021, after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, my health deteriorated and I was unable to work. I was always tired and had to stand up, so my legs hurt and I couldn’t stand it. I took painkillers every day, but they did not help at all. So, I called the temp agency and told them I couldn’t go on. It was only a month’s work, but I couldn’t do it any longer.

My work was unstable, my health was poor and I could not earn a living. Again, I had to rely on my mother. My mother always told me that she didn’t want me to depend on her. Naturally, there was nothing I could do about it. Moreover, it seemed that my brother was complaining about me to my mother. I said I couldn’t work because of the vaccine, but nobody believed me. I went to the doctors, but not one of them believed me about the vaccine. I saw about three doctors and all of them said that such a thing was impossible.

Six months later, I was finally able to work, and this time I decided to try a job outside the temporary sector. I took a part-time job making aluminum ladders, and within a month I was accused of not having the screws fully inserted. There may have been a few cases where the tightening was not perfect, but the one shown to me was clearly off by more than 2~3 cm. I wanted to express that if there was such a mistake, I would have noticed it myself, but I remained silent. Honestly, this part-time job was unstable and continuously hiring people. The person who made this a big problem and made sure I couldn’t stay there was the site manager. Even after I left, they continued to advertise job vacancies for months. Even after a year, they were still recruiting, even though they only needed one or two people. I think it was clear that there was a problem with the site manager’s character.

After several months of not finding work, I applied for a temporary job again in December. This time, the job was not to explain something to people work, but to find incomplete documents. My previous job had only lasted three months, so I was anxious about how long this one would last. Being over 50 and male, I was aware that I was at a disadvantage in the world of temporary work, where over 80% of the workforce is female. Surprisingly, however, I received an immediate response and was told that I could start immediately. I had been looking for work with another temp agency, but the sales person at this agency had almost secured the job for me once I had decided to take it. I knew it was rather rude to change my mind, but I had a strong dislike for the temp agency system, so I gave him the cold shoulder. When I started my new temp job, I attended training and started my real job. However, to put it mildly, the attitude of the agency staff towards me was peculiar. It was so strange that others could feel it. They always put me in an advantageous position and rushed to answer any questions I had.

Finally, women in the workplace who had not even said hello before started greeting me in the corridors. In this temp agency, the leaders formed several groups of people to make their work easier to see. There were only about three leaders in the room. I was part of a group with three women and two men. This composition was unusual, given that there were only two men in this office. I was older and, naturally, not a leader but a regular temporary worker. One day, a test question was posted in the group chat and we were asked to give a correct or incorrect answer. I immediately answered incorrectly. The question was communicated to everyone in the workplace a few days later as a warning. I had answered correctly.

The chat function was also open to abuse as it allowed users to have private conversations with specific people. I noticed that all private conversations with the leader of the group I was sitting next to were shared with the women behind the scenes. Even without concrete evidence, I could sense this from snippets of the conversations and the attitudes of these women. The leader of these women was from the same group as me. From my point of view, she seemed to be the type of person who was clear and polite in her speech, but not necessarily truthful and was manipulative. I thought she had a certain level of intelligence, but often I thought she had devious thoughts and behaviors. After a while, the temporary agency employee attitude towards me hardened. They became very cold and it was clear that the woman was manipulating them behind my back.

Three months after joining the company, I decided it was time to quit and expressed my intention to look for a new job. I received a half-hearted reply, as if I could quit at any time. She said she didn’t mind quitting immediately. In a way, she said, ‘We don’t need you anymore. You are useless’ One company representative told me that he would definitely hire me if you came. That was after I got the job interview, and I had already decided on what day I was going to leave that job. I left early because it was already painful for me to be in that job. When I told him that I wanted to move on immediately, he said he was worried because I have changed jobs so often. If he was concerned about it, I wish he had mentioned it from the start. I wouldn’t have quit. And after scolding me thoroughly, he didn’t even hire me at all. I felt like I was being toyed with by a company that wanted employees. However, as I had left my previous company, I couldn’t go back.

In such an unreasonable and strange society, my dislike for Japan and its work culture became even stronger. I wanted to work for myself instead of being employed by someone else, so I looked for work online. I looked at various options, such as on-demand printing, but I couldn’t rely on my mother anymore because I didn’t have any money. From April, I had an insurance policy arranged by my mother, and 500,000 yen were paid into my account every year. I had no choice but to rely on it. I appreciated her plans, but there were certain aspects of my mother’s behavior that I couldn’t tolerate. She did what she wanted all her life and never really understood the concept of work because she only had a few years of work experience. I did not want my father’s death to be in vain.

When I was living on less than half a million yen, I began to feel ill. I had cold-like symptoms, but the cause could not be identified. Two weeks went by with no improvement and I felt sluggish. At first, I thought I might have a coronavirus and was tested twice, but all tests were negative. A month later, with my health deteriorating and my money running out, I decided to call my mother. When I called, I heard my mother’s voice saying, ‘Here it comes, here it comes’ when she saw my phone number. Just by hearing those words, I immediately understood what my mother meant. On the phone, my mother and my sister-in-law were laughing and making fun of my misfortune. They were mocking me. At the time, my mother had spent some time at my brother’s house. My brother and I were not close, and I had never been to his flat and had never been invited. His family, along with his mother, visited my apartment once as part of their family trip.

During our phone call, I didn’t bring up any significant topics. Instead, I simply told my mother that she could live her life as she wished and hung up. I am aware that begging for money is not a noble act, but my mother had been living as she pleased since my father’s death. The money she had was money that my father had earned by doing the best he could.

A few months earlier, my mother tried to throw away the nameplate of my father’s name that was on the front door. I insisted that I could not throw it away and took it to my flat. At the same time, I felt that my mother was insulting my father. It’s beyond imagination to casually discard the nameplate, even with my father’s name on it, by my mother who has long embraced a life of freedom, as if it were mere trash. Moreover, when my mother told me that she had a new lover, I had no words to reply. I wanted to ask her how she could live so freely. My father endured my mother’s contempt until the day he died. Is such behavior acceptable? That is why I decided to share this story with the world.

I continued to feel unwell and went to the doctor several times for check-ups, but the doctor told me that there was nothing wrong with my health and that he had measured my blood pressure and found nothing wrong. Then I began to believe that I was healthy, and, strangely enough, the illness disappeared. I went back to work. A few months later, I decided to put the flat on the market because the price of flats in Japan had risen exceptionally high and there was a possibility that it could be sold for more than the price my mother had bought it for. The apartment was in my name through a process called inheritance.

I called an estate agent to my flat to set the price and found that, as expected, it would sell for 1.5 times more than when I bought it. I immediately signed a contract with the agent to put the property on the market. I decided to take the money from the sale and gradually increase it, taking care not to reduce it. I will move from my flat to a month-to-month flat, gradually increasing the amount. After two months with no one showing interest in the flat, the real estate agent found a potential buyer who appeared highly likely to purchase it. The buyer also wanted to buy it for his daughter because her parents wanted to buy it for their daughter. It was a similar situation to when we bought it. And I heard from the estate agent that he was 99% sure that he was going to buy it. I received a letter from my flat at my apartment. The letter said that she wanted to visit my flat this month. That was exactly the state of negotiations with the buyer and I thought that if my mother came there it could be the worst situation.

I sent a letter to my mother. In the letter, I said that we are in the process of negotiating a sale and I don’t want my mother to come to my flat. And I want my keys back. I also wrote that I want her to set me free. The buyer expressed a desire to purchase, and before the sales contract was signed, a letter from my mother arrived at my apartment in response. It said, ‘I have understood what you are saying. Take care of yourself and move forward. If you encounter any problems, please let me know. For the first time, I felt that my mother looked at me as a person. And the key was back. My heart was a mixture of happiness and sadness. Anyway, let’s move on. Life may be over, but it’s not all over yet.