Next month, I am planning to climb Mt. Fuji.  I have a feeling that it will be one of climaxes and one big turning point of my life.

  In 199X, when I was in the early 30s, I was doing the “eki-demo,” literally, it could be translated as “demonstration at a station.”  What I actually was doing was a johrei, purification of the spirit, to an old man sitting on a bench at a bus stop.  He opened his eyes and took a stared at my palms.

  After the johre, the man said to me “Your palms are telling that you will be going to Mt. Asama.”  I replied to him, consenting somehow, “Really?”

  He then asked, “Do you see what I mean?” and I said “Suicide.”  His answer was “Oh.  You know it because you have the faith!  Keep on having the faith.”

  I was fatigued with my life by all means.

  I have been in the same conditions ever since until now.  I felt that I could jump into the volcanic crater of Mt. Fuji if it had been similar to that of Mt. Asama.  Well, I just wrote “felt” as a past tense.  The reason why I did this was because I happen to have a good idea at the beginning of this month.

  Well, I just wrote Mt. Asama.  But it might have been Mt. Mihara.

  Because I remembered and understood one sentence from the Scripture, “A burning hell is a spirit which has been burn to death or has jumped into the crater of Mt. Mihara.”

  Mt. Asama is as high as 2,568m, and I would be losing my heart on the way.  My memories have been somehow messed up.

  And I will be quitting my part time job on July 26^th.  My current job is against the dietary education; my job is to make “onigiri” or rice balls and sandwiches which will be sold at convenience stores.  Recently, for the last one-half year, I have been leading a life, eating too many onigiri of convenient stores.

  Before I was assigned in onigiri production line, it was sort of my relaxation time to stop by some convenient stores to buy noodles (mainly pasta stuff) and once in a while, okonomiyaki, and to eat them in my car on my way back home, very early hours in the morning.

  When I had my health check at my company in May, I thought I would have an evaluation of D and I hoped that I would get a D.

  And I had a D evaluation.  I had a touch of anemia.  Evaluation D means that I have to have a detailed examination, so I have to go to a hospital.

  For the last few years, I had had C evaluations in my health check.  I kept on ignoring the advice that I should have a detailed examination.  Evaluation D may be one of the reasons of quitting the job.  I said “I do not want to keep on doing this job with this situation of going to a hospital,” and quitted the job.  The numbers in the health check results may not differ so greatly, but the evaluation worsened maybe because I had neglected the situation.

  I had always wanted to quit the job.  However, I could not make up my mind until now.  I do not have other job right now.  I felt that my soul gave me the D evaluation in order to save me.

  I listened to a story of Mr. Shomei Yoh on a radio program called “rajio shin-ya bin,” literally translated as midnight delivery of a radio, the year before last.  Since then, I began to think about the three meaning of a word “LIFE.”  Mr. Yoh found an important theme in this word, and he said that “LIFE” has the meaning of “state of being alive,” “the period between birth and death,” and “a way of living.”

  When I think of “the period between birth and death,” I sometimes imagine my life somewhat different from the current one.  I imagine a life, living in a business of music and get a success in it.  However, there is me, who thinks that it should not be the way.

  “A way of living.”  Where to live, (what sort of job I do,) in what sort of a house to live in, various life styles.  My taste for clothes, foods and housing.  The pursuing my taste, to be typical to myself.  A lifestyle including my hobbies.

  I have an image of an ideal life which I always have in my mind.  I would like to bring this to a reality someday.

  “The state of being alive.”  I feel that I won’t be able to keep on living without johrei, the purification of the spirit, in case of myself.  Though, I do not adhere to be alive so much.

  Mr. Yoh said that a balance of these three was important.

  Both a goal of life and how one wants to lead the life are important themes.  One tends to forget a key point if he/she keeps on aiming at a quality of life.

  He also said that a balance between what one wants to do and what one ought to do is important, too.  One will regret if he/she does only one of the two.

  I nodded “Yes, that is right!!” when I heart Mr. Yoh said “it is not possible if you just do the things which you ought to do, without doing what you want to do.  That could burn you out and you get sick.”

  He said he kept in mind to be in a medium, not in an extreme.

  Yoh Shomei Art Museum in Kamakura seems to ease the visitors’ fatigued heart and to give energy to them, but he said that it would take at least 10 years more to pay back the loan as he built the museum at the time of so called bubble economy.

  There is another Yoh Shomei Museum in Mt. Aso.  There must be people those who stopped killing themselves after they visited here.

  I have been thinking about “LIFE,” and have been struggling as I just could not get a solution.  Now, I feel that I will have a breakthrough soon.

  Last month, I looked at a website of “rajio shin-ya bin” program of NHK.  It had been a while to look at this website for a long time.  I listened to several stories, and I found necessary words in one of them; a story “let’s talk about ‘A Mother’” by Mr. Kang Sang-jungj.

  When he was living in Kumamoto, his mother used to use a phrase “gowasan-de.”  She could not read nor write Japanese language because she had moved into Japan.  Still, she could use “soroban” as she was engaged in merchandising.  Soroban is an abacus developed in Japan, and at the beginning of each calculation, people say “Gowasan-de Negaimashitewa,” or, literray translated as “Forget all the previous calculations and start a new one.”  Another phrase she often used was “Nantoka narubai,” or, “It will be solved somehow.”

  He said that his mother might use these two phrases, “Gowasan-de Negaimashitewa” and “Nantoka narubai” as maxims to lead a hard life, where she could not forecast the future.

  And Mr. Kang was referring to a phrase by Mr. William Jamese, a philosopher and psychologist, who gave some influence to a Japanese novelist Mr. Soseki Natsume, a Mr. Kang’s favorite novelist.

  The phrase was “there are once born people and the twice born people.  Once born people appear biologically predisposed to happiness.  By contrast there are people who feel there is something wrong with reality that must be rectified.  They want to be born again as their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes.  And he called these people as twice born people.”

  And I watched an NHK TV program, in which elementary school kids in Fukushima and Miyagi were in evacuation drill to higher places (as a precaution against tsunami).  One kid, the fifth grader, said “I have to protect myself.  So, I will cherish my friends.2

  I wrote this while listening to the recorded tape of the conversation of the two people, Mr Kang and Mr. Yoh.  The sentences I’m writing from now are my impressions, not a summary of the story.

  I wrote down the things which had been kept in my memory, which touched upon my heartstrings and I have some feeling that I might fail to write the rich and thick contents of the story.

  Anyway, I have a feeling to throw away and forget everything (or, to do Gowasan) and I could take that positively.

  And I felt relieved as I started to feel that everything will be all right while saying the phrase “Nantoka narubai” repeatedly.

  I sometimes feel “I do not have friends.”  While listening to the words of the kids on TV, that made me feel as if I was just sulky and that also made me feel positively that I may make new friends even if I do not have one right now.  So, I just wanted to speak out that I happened to have something in my mind.

Probably, “Nantoka narubai.”

July, 2012