Let’s see… Today is June the 17th, the opening day of my live tour. As I’ve said before, I still am and will continue to update this column every Friday. Naturally, it will cover whatever happened during the few preceding days. However, the day before I finished writing this one was absolutely terrible, and now that I’m about to start performing again, my emotions are all mixed, so as a result I’ve decided to retell everything backwards. Currently, I am writing this on the morning of Sunday, June the 12th.
I guess I’m pretty nervous now that the live tour is about to start, especially since I’ll be performing all by myself. Moreover, the first show is in Fukuoka, my home area. I’m already feeling like “there’s no running away now.” But I’m also relieved that it won’t be too hot outside. Actually, while I was rehearsing for the show, I felt so frustrated. “Gah, there’s not enough time…” If I could, I’d like to take as long as possible to prepare. During that time, because I was under a lot of strain, I eventually became exhausted, and soon started suffering from dizziness, probably also due to having caught cold recently. My condition soon intensified even more from the lack of sleep I got for refusing to turn on the air conditioner. If I had left it on while sleeping, my throat would of course become sore, but if I didn’t, the heat wouldn’t let me sleep no matter how hard I tried. To make matters worse, I was tortured by the fear that if I left it on, I would get chilled in my sleep and my cold would worsen, and this fear wouldn’t let me sleep either. This is probably as bad as sleeplessness can get. That’s why I wasn’t worried about how I should get proper rest, not like Masato Shimon with his “Every～day, every～day, burning on a teppan plate from the p-pain of sickness“[1], or else my mind would become muddled from too much soliloquizing. At the end of it I went “meh, the hell do I care!” In other words, adopted the “live naturally, live in the moment” kind of mindset. Though I gotta admit, deciding whether or not to turn on that air conditioner was a major issue for me. I even made a rap song about it once[2].
That’s why I’m really glad that although it’s mid-June, the weather is relatively mild, and I can welcome the start of my tour amidst favorable circumstances. I can’t stress enough how great this seemingly trifling feeling is.
However, it seems that during the times of extreme heat everyone around can’t stop complaining: “Man, it’s so hot～dammit, so hot.” “That’s right, stupid heat, huh, isn’t it stupid? Stupid, stupid, stupid!” And yet, during midwinter when it’s cold, the conversation turns into: “Why won’t this silly cold go away?” “That’s right, it’s too cold, too cold to bear, too much, cold rice, cold eggs.” But when the weather is nice for the rest of the year, they won’t even mention how nice it is. Well, I guess the news on TV is pretty bad. Everyone only chooses bad things to talk about and others to blame, but once they get drunk, they turn cheery all of the sudden. Strange tendencies people have… When I was young myself, I also used to be a brat like that. But that’s enough, why don’t we just stop. I say, let’s launch into this tour with the following mindset: “Aah～I’m glad, aah～so glad. It’s not too hot, I’m soooo glad!“
…That being said, it’s only nice for now as I am writing this on Sunday the 12th. Let’s say you just started all of the sudden panicking after checking the forecast for the coming week on the internet. “Uhh, this is bad, now it’s going to be hot outside…” Alright, in case that happens, let’s have a quiz. “Well then, here’s a question for you. I wonder what it’ll be?” I feel it’s my responsibility to find a creative way to distract you the readers by setting some questions for you.
That being said, here it is:
For people like me who basically don’t watch TV what is the one Sunday program that I really like and watch almost every week? Pick one of the following three options.
The correct answer will be revealed two weeks from now. Please look forward to it.
2005/06/17
TL notes:
[1] The original lyrics from Masato Shimon’s famous song “Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun”: “Everyday, everyday, we keep burning on a teppan plate” (=Mainichi, mainichi, bokura wa teppan no ue de yakarete”). Here KAN is playing on the sound of Shimon’s lyrics, particularly “bokura” (we), which he slurs into “byoku” [i.e.”byouku”] (pain of sickness).
[2] “Tokyo Nettai Squeeze”