My trivial thinking

The Hours is a serious drama based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name, itself inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway . The film opens with Woolf walking to the river in 1941, where she drowns herself. In 1923, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is writing Mrs Dalloway while struggling with severe mental illness. In 1951 Los Angeles, a young housewife, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), is reading Woolf’s novel and wrestling with the suffocating expectations of being a perfect wife and mother. In 2001 New York, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is preparing a party for her dear friend Richard, a poet who is dying of AIDS. The film weaves these three women’s lives together with remarkable sophistication. Laura tries to perform the role of the ideal wife and mother, yet she senses another self hidden beneath the surface. One day she leaves her son with a friend, checks into a hotel with Mrs Dalloway , and attempts suicide—but cannot go through with it. After ...

  “It would be nice to visit a hot spring in autumn, wouldn’t it?” I remembered my younger daughter saying that before. So last week, our family — including my elder daughter and her husband — went to Kinosaki Onsen in Hyogo Prefecture. The crab season had just begun on November 7 this year. The weather wasn’t great, but we enjoyed a sumptuous crab dinner at a comfortable ryokan , and of course, we relaxed in the famous hot spring.   The next day, after browsing some souvenir shops, we stopped by Nova , a coffee house near Kinosaki Onsen Station.   The coffee was excellent and the music created a pleasant atmosphere. I asked the owner’s wife what music was playing, and she showed us the CD jacket. It was LANDSCAPES by the Jan Lundgren Trio , a Swedish jazz group.   On our way home, we made a stop at Amanohashidate , known since ancient times as one of the Three Views of Japan. The name means “bridge to heaven.” I had been there twice before, but it was t...

Mrs Dalloway is one of Virginia Woolf’s masterpieces and was first published in 1925. Many readers consider it one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. The story follows a single June day in 1923 as Clarissa Dalloway prepares for her evening party in London. Woolf portrays the stream of consciousness of Clarissa and several other characters in long, fluid passages that move like flowing water. Because of this style, the novel can be challenging for English learners; I managed to read it by using the Japanese translation alongside the original. The novel opens with the famous line: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Peter Walsh, Clarissa’s old friend who has just returned from India, visits her and brings back memories of their youth. He once loved her, and there was also Sally, another close friend. Clarissa learned about sexuality and society through Sally, who awakened in her a youthful, almost romantic admiration. In the end, Clarissa refused P...

Every year at the end of October, my mountain‑climbing friends hold a reunion. I don’t attend every time, but this year I felt I needed to go because I had been feeling depressed since late summer. About twenty years ago, more than forty people from all over Japan gathered at the Mawarime‑daira campsite at the foot of Mt. Kinpu. But this year, fewer than ten people joined. The reunion was held at Lodge Motive in the Pilatus Pension Village in the Tateshina Highlands. The beautiful autumn colors and long conversations with old friends truly lifted my spirits.   Lake Shirakaba