I intended to run this morning and had my alarm clock set to 5:00am, but I couldn’t get up. I guess I was tired from yesterday.
I played golf all day under the strong sunshine after the rainy season, and I was very tired indeed. I tried many times to get up and run, but I couldn’t do it. Well, there’s no point in pushing it. It would be the end of the world if it interfered with my work.
It’s only the 3rd of August, so the rainy season is over and there should be plenty of opportunities to run in the morning. First of all, I need to get rid of my fatigue and get myself in shape before I run.
The picture I took this morning was taken during my trip to Hokkaido last summer. I visited Yubari and stopped at the Happy Yellow Handkerchief Memorial Museum. Along the road to the lodge, I found a number of abolished stations on the JR line. One of them is “Minami ooyubari” station.
Yubari station was also gone. The building of Yubari station was changed into a small souvenir shop or a coffee shop.
In Hokkaido, the railway lines of JR Hokkaido have been closed one after another. With a shrinking population and a declining railway usage rate, the railway network, which had been an asset of the people, and which had been developed over a long period of time since the Meiji era, is being abandoned one after another. There will never be any trains running again.
Along with the closing of the coal mines, the town of Yubari has become an abandoned town. I can’t even imagine what life is like for the people living in Yubari now.
But I am sure that they will come to our town sooner or later.
Today’s picture is of a watermelon that Taku gave me when I drove my new Subaru Impreza to Takasaki the other day. He remembered that eating a watermelon after a morning run is the best part of the day for me. When Taku went on a family vacation, he bought it for me. Afterwards, I ate it cold and it was the most delicious watermelon I’ve ever tasted.
Today, I came back from golf and I ate the chilled watermelon my friend gave me to help with my dehydration. I shared the watermelon with Sun at that time, and she told me a surprising story.
It was when Taku was still little. When he ate a manjuu, Taku didn’t keep it to himself; he would break it in half and share it with his mother. What’s even more amazing is that he always gave the bigger portion of the manju to his mother. I was truly amazed at this story. It’s not an easy thing for a human being to do.
Sun told me that I had done it to Taku, so Taku must have done it to his mother. But I honestly don’t remember that at all. Sun says my grandson, Masato, will be like that too, and I think it’s amazing.
Some people might not think it’s a big deal, but I think it’s a big deal. Human greed is infinite. The late Kokontei Shincho used to say the following willow in his rakugo pillow.
The more the snow falls, the more it piles up, the more greedy he is , the road is forgotten.
That’s exactly what it is. Human greed is truly a terrible thing. When you watch the TV movie “Columbo”, all the criminals in the movie are people of high social status. It seems to me that they have had enough, but they want to have more.
The rich people of the world are always thinking the same thing: “I want to be richer. I want to be richer.
That’s why, as a father, I’m so happy to hear that Taku used to break the manjuu in half and give it to his mother instead of keeping it all to himself, and that he would always give the bigger portion to her.
Hearing that story today, I was immersed in a feeling of happiness from the bottom of my heart.