Canon's Diary

Tuesday, July 1.
Last night I got home late, so I didn’t soak in the tub—just took a quick shower. Even this morning, waking up, I felt a sluggish heaviness lingering in the thick, humid air. It’s sunny outside, but my apartment building is under exterior renovation, scaffolding all around. Even the windows on my top-floor unit on the sixth floor are wrapped in hefty steel pipes. The view is far from pleasant, and my mood is a bit gloomy, too.

Since I forgot to cook rice yesterday, breakfast ended up being frozen fried rice again. “Pretty heavy-flavored for the morning,” I thought, topping it with some green onions to adjust the taste.

From early on, the heat was oppressive. On my commute, I was already starting to sweat. Honestly, it makes me dread the real summer ahead. I’m seriously starting to consider going to work in a T-shirt and shorts, then changing into my work clothes in the locker room.

I rode the elevator up to my office on the sixth floor of the company headquarters. A bunch of people crowded in. Inside that cramped box, bodies close, heat rising—it was stifling. We all rode up in silence, but even that short trip felt painfully long, making me wish desperately for my floor to come sooner.

Once I started working… well, what can I say? It’s nowhere near the amount I could finish in a single day. The number of projects I’m involved in has grown, and the workload has become quite substantial. Lately, it feels like I’m “drowning in unfinished tasks.”

Being a working adult means spending almost all of your weekdays—really, most of the time you’re allotted in life—just doing “work.” Is that how it’s supposed to be? Life is short. Honestly, I’d rather lavish my time on thinking about myself and my family. If I’m going to fret, I’d rather it be over my mother or my wife. Getting consumed by work every single day… at my age, I’m simply fed up with it.

After coming home from work, I started preparing dinner while heating the bath. I decided to make my usual cabbage soup. Boiled cabbage, pork, and carrots, seasoned with soba dipping sauce, bonito stock, and a bit of grated ginger. When cooking rice in the rice cooker, I added some matsutake soup base for flavor. I topped both the rice and the cabbage soup with chopped green onions. The rice had a wonderful matsutake aroma—I added just a splash of soy sauce too. The cabbage soup had its usual gentle taste. I still think keeping it this lightly seasoned lets you truly appreciate the flavors of the ingredients.