Yukimi Ogawa's Blog, page 2

Count down with me--Day 7

"Town's End" is actually about the end of my hometown. There is a shrine that I had in mind when I wrote about the place with the sun-goddess in the story.
I used this occasion to visit that place. And realized, the place is much, much smaller than what I had envisioned in my memory.
Really, as I walked to the shrine, I realized everything I passed by was much smaller than I remembered. No wonder, a few decades has passed between then and now. Still...


Just a small altar, not a building!

And a few very very small altars.


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Count down with me--Day 8

I like polishing raw opal stones. When I was polishing an opal one day, I thought, the powder that came off the stone smelled strange. That was when I started writing "Taste of Opal."

I wanted to show you this as in-my-mind example of "jet and opal blood blended evenly," which didn't happen in the story, but the polishing didn't go very well.
This is called matrix opal.

I cut a chunk off this and polished that chunk.


This is an opal I polished long ago. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can see a beautiful blue among the green. This one kind of appears in the story.


This, by the way, is the first opal I ever polished. The seller recommended me something easy to polish.


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Count down with me--Day 9

"Hundred Eye" is a story about yokai called dodomeki. When I decided to write a story about her, something popped into my mind.
I flip through my copy of Toriyama Sekien's collection, an artist who drew yokai, from time to time for inspiration. I had come across this page and thought, oh, how cute!

This is ninmenju, and I wrote Nin based on this yokai. How can one not write a story about it!? So I made these two meet.

This, by the way, is dodomeki. She is beautiful, too, isn't she?


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Count down with me--Day 10

"Grayer Than Lead, Heavier Than Snow" is another colorful island story featuring Kiriko, a craftsperson who works there as a colorless laborer.
For her, I wrote some words. I hope you enjoy them.

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*********
Miya almost dropped a chunk off her soft omusubi as she tried to wave back to her friend—she should have made the omusubi tighter, harder—but the friend came in to the shop, anyway. Kiriko, a craftsperson working at the atelier a few blocks down the road, who was a few years older than Miya herself. "Hey Miyako," the craftsperson said as she pushed open the door with her shoulder; she always had a huge bundle of wrapping cloth in her arms. "Anything new?"
Miya grinned. "I was just going to call you, Kiri. Look at this beauty!"
This place worked both as a shop for the locals, and as the backyard for the shop on the High Street, which stood there for foreigner tourists to wander in. The shop mostly handled second-hand jewelry and artifacts, and only the eye-catching things went to the shop at the front, after Miya examined and cleaned them. Today, she had been tending to a very peculiarly shaped ring; or rings, perhaps. Two rings merged into one, so that you had to wear it on two fingers, restricting the movement of the fingers a little but providing a space for more gems and other materials to cover the oval table on top. There were many butterflies on the table, made with amethyst, aquamarine, seashells, and some kind of fossil. And a few flowers and leaves, sprinkled with seed pearls and connected with vines made of jade.
Kiriko let out a laugh at the sight, amused. "Wow. The maker couldn't be satisfied with one ring, obviously."
"Obviously."
"Can I touch it?"
"Sure, why not? We don't know if this one is going to the front shop, anyway—too bold in design."
The craftsperson laughed again, but then sobered. She sat down properly at the counter and started turning the ring this way and that. Then...Kiriko smiled.
"What?" Miya almost demanded.
"Miyako...you know you are a butterfly-colored person, right?"
"What?" Miya wondered if she'd just misheard, or if her friend had lost her mind. Miya was working here like this because she had no special color on her skin, something she could show off to the foreign tourists. Let alone...butterfly? "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Oh! I truly thought you knew but worked here because it was just not as showy as you liked. Your skin is homogeneously covered with a very thin layer of pearlescent particle, like butterfly scales. Perhaps it's too subtle for ordinary eye to see."
"Oh." That rang true, kind of. Miya had been complemented on her smooth, shiny beautiful skin many times especially by foreigners, even though not for its color.
Kiriko shook her head. "I really should make a habit of saying these things aloud. Anyway. Unlike butterfly scales, you are perpetually shedding the particles off your skin. I guess it's because the particles are not entirely natural to human. It's completely microscopic in size, mind."
Miya self-consciously touched her cheeks.
"This ring..." Kiriko heaved a sigh. "This thing was made by someone like us. Me and my sensei. People who can hide pattern in pattern. There are engravings all over this piece, as you can see. But there are messages hidden within in these engravings. I wouldn't have been able to see it without our microscope, but now I can. Because some grooves are engraved in a way they attract your particles into them, making the grooves glow and show better. I'm sure you can see this now, too, with a simple loupe or something."
Miya blinked, and then narrowed her eyes at the thing. She could see nothing. "What does it say?"
The craftsperson looked closely at the ring, as if to make sure. Then she said, "It's a love letter. From someone, to a butterfly-colored person. The maker had so many things they wanted to tell the butterfly person, that's probably why this ring is shaped so strange." Kiriko let out a breath. "I think this used to belong to someone related to you."
For a long moment, Miya didn't know what to say. There weren't many shops that were involved in this business in this city, so it wasn't too hard to believe something like this could happen to her working here. Still. "Do you think..."
"Yes, I think you should keep this thing, Miyako. Talk to your boss. I'll help you with the payment if he proposes a large sum, but like you say the design is too bold and not for many people. So."
Miya held the piece up, in the light. She still couldn't see the particles, on the ring, or on her skin. But she knew this craftsperson wouldn't lie about such things. "This is beautiful, isn't it?"
The craftsperson nodded. "It would look even more beautiful on your fingers, Miyako."
Miya slowly slipped the thing on her fingers, and smiled at her friend.

Count down with me--Day 11

Storehouses fascinate me. I'm not sure why, but the reason may be something similar to the reason why I love farmhouse annex. They are not something every house has, but not too difficult to find, and still have the air of different reality, if you know what I mean. Full of old stuff, which used to be part of the daily life, but not anymore.
"Rib" is one of those stories that involve storehouse/farmhouse annex.

I made this hair thing--I'm not sure what you call this. We call it a pony hook, to be hooked on the band tying a ponytail.


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Count down with me--Day 12

I once read an article in an industrial newspaper, where a manufacturer was explaining about their new product; their newly developed coffin, produced in a way the nails used for it wouldn't "hurt the bones" and thus would "protect the dignity of the deceased" during the incineration process. I did not (and do not) understand that sentiment about bones. At that time heavy metals and other chemicals left in the ashes from the funeral sites (those were leftover ashes after people picked up the bones) were gaining attention. Chemicals from both the human bodies and the coffins. The story "The Shroud for the Mourners" got started here.
The confection I referred to as "candied agar" is something we call "amber sugar." Here is a photo of them. I love them, they are crispy when your teeth touch them but soft and sticky inside.


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(YES--the above photo does include a few things that are not edible. Can you point out which ones?)

Count down with me--Day 13

Many years ago, as I was shopping stationery like I always do, I found a pen with its color name "Tsuyukusa" written on it. When I held it in my hand a memory came rushing back at me--me, very young, holding a tsuyukusa flower that I'd just picked off the ground. I'd completely forgotten about the flower and its color. I just couldn't help but buy that pen, and write a story about that color.

I made this thing--not the glasses, but that cord thing!


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Count down with me--Day 14

"Ripen" is one of the colorful island stories, where Kiriko, a craftsperson, tries to find the cause of defect in her atelier's craft. I acutally wrote this story when I was trying to pinpoint where the product contamination had happened for the company I was working for at that time. The product had two substances that it shouldn't have contained: DBP and DEHP.
In the end, we found out that the two substances had come from the rubber material coating the roller in the printer. They bled out into the ink when the ink touched the rubber material. It was a horrifying yet inspiring experience.

I made this for Madam Fallen Fruit's bag!



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Count down with me--Day 15

"Ever Changing, Ever Turning" is one of the colorful island stories. Shino is a woman of shinonome color skin, a shop assistant selling traditional garments, who meets Tsukiko, a friend who would change her life--completely.

I made obi jewelry for Shino.
(...sorry, these posts will be mostly my crafts, but that was predictable, wasn't it?)




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Count down with me--Day 16

Nini is care-taker AI installed on a space station full of old people. It started out as a humourous story, ended up...not so humourous.

Today--let's talk about mochi, the kind of food that Nini mainly consumes.

In Japan, choking on food accounts for more than 3,500 deaths of those aged 65 or older (including 2,500 of those aged 80 or older.) In 2018, 363 people aged 65 or older died choking on mochi, and 298 in 2019 (661 in total.) 127 incidents out of these 661 occurred in the first three days of January, when mochi is most frequently consumed. Mochi--though what Nini eats is in a slightly different form than what Japanese people usually have during the first three days of January--gets stickier the temperature lower; in the steaming bowl of soup the mochi might look nice and soft, but as soon as you pop a piece into your mouth the texture becomes changes, to a more deadly one. It is very important to put a manageable size of mochi into your mouth, and wait before you have the next mouthful until the piece currently in your mouth is completely gone.
As a person who eats mochi all year round, I am determined to be very careful--though, well, this particular amount of excessive mochi in my mouth cannot surely hurt, as I'm more than twenty years away from reaching 65...

Data from Consumer Affairs Agency's news release:
https://www.caa.go.jp/policies/policy...

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