Hobbies Though I would like to say that I have no accomplishments and no hobbies, if I should say so, some peoples around me will surely make an objection to me. One of my critical juniors in postgraduate school declared that my satsuki bonsai was a kind of mania beyond a hobby. It is because I don't like to do anything by halves, and I would like to tell that all parts of satsuki bonsai have not developed into a mania: that is a kind of impulse provoked by my intention to live through this world. When I got married after leaving a hospital, it was a great problem to me how I would be able to move my stiff and panting body easily Therefore I thought I might be able to move it if I did things earnestly which I liked to do.
Then the next problem is 'What should I
do?' As our flat near Kobe station had
a narrow garden enclosed with a high fence
which defended it from the cold wind in winter,
I made a plan to make a lot of saplings of
satsuki. As my father produced green tea
near Uji city, I often worked in his tea
field. From this experience, I judged
that it was easy to grow the satuki tree
which is the same species as the tea tree.
I made several hundred saplings of satsuki,
and gave one third of them to a variety of
peoples. Being afraid of death terribly,
I loved living things from the bottom of
my heart and thought that it would be very
fortunate if only some of them would survive
after my death. When we moved to our house
in Ise, two trucks brought them in a lot
of big stainless net boxes. I took part
in Ise Satsuki Club, an association of like-minded
persons, and have improved my skill of satsuki
bonsai since then.
When I was invited to go fishing smell fish
by a good angler, I remembered that I often
went fishing in the river in my boyhood and
instantly agreed with him. As I had lived
in Yamatomachi for two years, it was very
difficult for me to go to Sochi by bicycle.
I walked up the sloping road slowly, leaning
on my bicycle. I walked up and down the
river, fishing smell fish. From this activity
for two years, I could walk on the ground
without pain gradually. 
The year after we moved to Ujiurata, I advised
to raise “ranchu” (a kind of goldfish which
is very expensive). The interest in living
things instigated me to do so again. I
went to a concrete factory to ask them to
make a lot of concrete slabs to make fourteen
concrete square ponds of which each side was 1.5 m. My friends
helped me to make them in a green house and
two bigger pounds outside it. I made heating
equipment in them and it, and a system to
pump air into them. Besides, as I needed
a lot of water, I made waterworks with an
electric-powered well pump to cut down the
charges of city water. In those days I
could moved the body more easily than before.
Since ten years ago a friend of mine sometimes
have invited me to go fishing in the sea
by his big boat. Therefore I stopped hiring
a fisherman's boat to fish in the sea once
a week. This is one of the causes to increase
my weight. But as I have spent my extra
money on satsuki bonsai in recent years instead
of fishing since then, I have a lot of big
satsuki trees on the shelves: that is, though
all the satsuki trees which I brought from
Kobe toYamatomachi, Ujiurata and Fujisato are my products, new
faces of the satsuki bonsai have been added
to them. When my wife happened to water
them and count the number of flower pots
several years ago, she told me that they
amounted to about 350, including very little
flower pots. When the junior of mine saw
my products in Ujiurata, he said to me, “this
is not a hobby, but a mania,” but when he
saw the new faces in Fujisato, he said nothing.
Beside I have about 210 satsuki trees planted
in the field near our house. Therefore
I myself sometimes think that it is a kind
of madness beyond a mania. 
I like to drive a car and visit a lot of
places which are far from our house. As
I had some relatives who had suffered from
cancer after my father's death, I took it
in mind to go around the 33 temples and the
additional 4 temples which are very famous
for Kannon (the Goddess of Mercy in Buddhism)
to pray Kannon for their cures. Though
I and my wife, Miyoko, went kneeling down
in prayer in front of Kannon on foot and
by car, our prayer did not serve to save
their lives, and all of them went on their
last journeys.
Because I had cut a quickset hedge in my
boyhood, I have not asked a gardener to cut
the trees in our garden. Recently my wife
helps me to cut the pine trees. To tell
the truth, it is because I think a good gardener
doesn't agree to undertake the job as they
are very poor compared with my satsuki bonsai.
Therefore we always cut all of the trees
planted in the field, too. But she is in
charge of steadying the ladder while I am
on it.
My wife loves a variety of flowers. When
she attended an institute class of rose in
Jingu Rose Garden, she was taught how to
graft the rose into the stock of wild rose,
and brought the sample of it and 72 stocks
of wild rose home. And spending that night
and the next day I grafted several kinds
of roses into all of them. Fortunately
I succeeded in 70 stocks. It is a level
of a professional. But as I had the same
kinds of roses, I gave one third of them
to some people. All the rose trees including
ones that I have bought have their flowers
now. How beautiful our rose garden is! But
it is I who have to spray them with insecticide
and germicide, and give manure to it.
Recently I plant only a few kind of vegetables. They
are a spring onion, a pumpkin and an eggplant:
that is, it is very easy for me to grow them,
and they are so strong that I spray them with insecticide and germicide only
at the same time when I spray satsuki trees and roses. A
lot of crows ate watermelons, tomatoes and
other fruits before we did. When we take
care of vegetables and fruits carefully,
that is, water them and give a lot of manure to them, they are very
tasteful to crows and worms. Now I remember
the taste of a persimmon and a fig grown in my father's field in
my boyhood and would like to plant the trees
of them in my field.