This is my essay.











November is the month, when meetings of alumnus of universities are often held here and there. On the 15th of November 2003, I joined to a dinner for the limited alumnus of the seminar of my university. The meeting of the whole alumnus of my university itself was scheduled to be held in Tokyo on the 18th of next week.

The latter whole alumnus meeting is quite common in all over the world, because the participants of this meeting are those people who graduated from same the university. A few hundreds people will be gathering. On the other hand, the former one, the limited alumnus of the seminar of my university is a kind of special version of the alumnus meeting.

The participants of this limited alumnus of the seminar of my university that I attended this year were ten. Among them, I have known four gentlemen, because we were classmates when we were the university students. However I didn't know the rest six gentlemen, during my enrollment in my university. That is no wonder, because some of them were senior and others were junior to us. The only one common feature is that we were taught by the same professor in a classroom. Since the professor has already passed away 13 years ago, such a gathering should have already disappeared long ago.

However, strangely enough, this reunion meeting has been continued by eager participants, such as Mr. K, who is a lawyer. Once he sends mail to inform us the date, time and place of the meeting, we will gather together and have a chat with non stopping. Therefore without Mr. K, we would not meet so easily like this. In that sense, Mr. K is an inevitable schoolmate for us. However the funny thing is that, this Mr. K is a man, who needs legitimacy on this dinner. In a sense, it might be an anachronistic way. He invites the mistress of the late professor to this dinner and asked her to sit the center of the table. participants of the same generation as myself know her very well. All of us are invited to her house. Some of them had an experience of listening her son's violin. So we welcomed her to be there and we had told various things on interesting subjects.

The late professor passed away by the tuberculosis, which we have already known. Through our talks, it was the first time for us to know that the reason why he got this disease was playing Kendo (the Japanese traditional sward practice) in his school days. She said that's why she disliked Kendo. The other participants told each stories. I was so interesting to think what would happen if I would go to this field.

The most senior person Mr. N is running his own company by which his name was entitled. After his graduation, he joined to a big business. After a while he resigned from the company, because he was asked to inherit his father's business. Now he has an interest of development of a robot. According to his explanation, he tackled with the development of a 4-legged robot, since a 2-legged robot, which Honda is developing was very difficult. I hope his success. I was interested in the stories of other participants. The judge of the Legal Research and Training Institute explained us how difficult to get good lecturers in a limited budget. Mr. T, the lawyer from Kansai area told about his volunteer job, saving from the menace of land mine. For example, he negotiated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the purpose of exporting efficient anti-mine machines. I thought he was a very energetic man. Mr. D, the lawyer announced that he would become a professor of a Japanese law school. He will teach the procedure of civil case. Hearing these talks, we sometimes laughed or sympathized. I thought we were living on the edge of the age.

Moreover, some of us are the government officials. The man of N Ministry had the same hometown as the entertainer Mr. Bunchin Katsura. He jokingly told many funny things, but I couldn't remember about them. The last was the youngest one, who came from the Kansai. He has worked for M bank. Later he was moved to the section of loan collection, which is thought to be the toughest job. By doing such an uninterested job, he devoted himself into bringing up his children and the part-time job of the referee of soccer. I presume he try to get some balance between his job and hobby. I understood his situation quite well probably. I think that there would be no such opportunity for us to learn our lives as our alumnus meeting. It is just like as a drama made by only ten persons who are doing various work of various fields.

Lastly I would like to make writing on the whole alumnus meeting of my university. My purpose was to see one of my old friends, Mr. O. We were good friends in our school days. I had an experience to visit his house in Hokkaido and I was welcomed by his mother. He was the legendary student, who studied very hardly. We said that he was so great, because he kept reading such uninteresting books. But apart from such hard study, he often played with me, such as Mah-Jongg, watching movies etc.. I think he tried to get a delicate balance between study and pastime. However, since our graduation, we have not seen each other. He stayed in Kyoto and I worked in Tokyo. As I heard that he has become a professor of our university, I wanted to say congratulation to him directly.

After the speeches by the former chief justice of the Supreme Court and the attorney generals continued finished, I tried to find Mr. O. Soon he found me and said "Hi!", with the same smiles as before. Long time, not seeing you, we said to each other. He said "I soon can identify you, because I have already known your face through your New Year card." Then I said to him, "Your face has been becoming similar one to your teaching professor." He jokingly protested me "I am hot happy to be said like that." The distance and time for the last 30 years had been packed in this only 5 minutes.

The famous Confucius said "How happy I am to see one of my old friends came to meet me from distant quarters!"

(November 30, 2003)




line




Essay of My Wonderful Life

(c) Yama san 2003, All rights reserved