Canon's Diary

May 20, 2025 – Yesterday, I took a long soak in the bath and made sure to get plenty of sleep. Thanks to that, I seem to have recovered from my fatigue. Today, the sun is out, and pleasant light is streaming into my west-facing desk. I have a tennis lesson scheduled tonight, so I’m planning to work up a good sweat for the first time in a while.

Now, I’d like to share a bit about my university days.

It was 1987 when I passed the university entrance exam. In that moment, I fell into the illusion that I had somehow become someone special. I wanted to build a bright future, to stop living in the shadows like I always had, to change myself. I had a strong resolve. Having been raised under the strict teachings of Buddhism since childhood, my ego was suppressed and cloaked in the bindings of compassion and prayer. I wanted to break free from that shell. So, I decided—regardless of the fine details—that I would throw myself fully into whatever I did. That was the mindset I had.

But reality didn’t align with my intentions. My college life became a chaotic mix of various social activities I tried to juggle all at once. In the end, I think I was often just spinning my wheels. Although I had made it into university, I was still an incomplete person—someone who knew nothing of society’s norms and couldn’t properly express his own self.

My time in university felt as though I were living in three completely different worlds at once.
The first was academics. The faculty of science and engineering offered few courses where just showing up would earn you credit. You had to perform reasonably well on exams, so a solid amount of study was required.
The second was the university tennis club. I joined as a challenge to overcome my communication issues. I thought it would be good practice in learning how to express my thoughts aloud and connect with others.
The third was my part-time job as a waiter at a restaurant. After entering university, I got a license to ride mid-sized motorcycles and bought a 400cc VFR400R (NC21) on a loan. To pay it off, working part-time was essential.

There was one more thing that deeply affected my university life: family matters. After my grandfather—the master carpenter—passed away, talk of inheritance arose among my father and his siblings regarding our family home. The Kazane family was pulled into a whirlwind of disputes. This happened at the start of my first year in university. Our family home in Higashigaoka, Meguro Ward, where multiple relatives lived together, was sold during the peak of the real estate bubble—for a staggering 1.1 billion yen.

Describing how I felt during those university years is incredibly difficult. In some ways, it was the busiest four years of my life. I intend to carefully piece together those scattered fragments of memory, one by one. I hope you’ll stay with me just a little longer.

It’s been 34 years since I graduated from university. The tennis school I attend now is about a five-minute walk from Tsukushino Station, nestled in a residential area atop a hill. There’s a simple roof made of a retractable white canopy, and on sunny days, you can play in the gentle light filtering through it. I stayed away from tennis for a while after graduating, but I picked it back up around 1997—so this year marks 28 years since my return. As long as my body allows it, I plan to keep going.

And that chaos from my university days… I still feel it quietly breathing somewhere within me.