It looked as though the sun might finally break through, but the sky soon filled with thick clouds again. After a quiet morning watching baseball and talking with my daughter in New York, my wife, Anne, and I went for a walk. It was only a little over three kilometers, but I took my walking stick just in case. And that made me unexpectedly conscious of how I might look to people in the neighborhood.
It looked as though the sun might finally break through, but in the end, the sky was once again covered with thick clouds.
Over a simple breakfast of pizza toast, yogurt, and coffee, I watched the Dodgers play the White Sox.
Major League Baseball is about to enter the postseason, and with so many players from Japan taking part this year, I am looking forward to it.
While I was watching the game, my daughter in New York called me for the first time in a while.
She had contacted a senior acquaintance of hers in Tanzania because she was thinking of going to visit. As it happened, there was a group of Japanese people there planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, so she joined them and successfully reached the summit last week.
As one might expect from a former member of a university mountaineering club, she found the climb tough but memorable.
When she returned to New York, the United Nations General Assembly was in session, and apparently she had quite a time getting caught in the terrible traffic.
Meanwhile, Anne was beginning to look bored, so we decided to go for a walk.
My wife’s volunteer group had put up a poster in the underground passage at the station, so we made that our destination.
It was going to be a long walk—or what counts as a long walk for me at the moment—though only a little over three kilometers there and back. Since I never know what might happen along the way, I took my walking stick just in case and had my wife hold Anne’s leash.
When we arrived, another member of the volunteer group had also come to see the poster, and we took a commemorative photo in front of it.
On the way home, we stopped at a chocolate shop, where I bought a small gift for my secretary, who will be leaving at the end of this month.
Along the way, we ran into some people from the neighborhood and stopped to chat.
Many people around here do not know me, but they know my wife and Anne quite well. So I found myself wondering what they might think when they saw me—the husband, or perhaps I should say Anne’s owner—walking with a stick.
Then again, perhaps no one thought anything of it at all.
Maybe they simply thought it was perfectly normal for someone my age.
Perhaps we are far more conscious of how others see us than others are of us.
・・・
break through — 雲の間などから「（日差しが）差し込む」。the sun breaks through the clouds などと使う。
reach the summit — 「登頂する」。山の頂上に無事到達すること。
mountaineering club — 「山岳部、ワンダーフォーゲル部」。Wandervogel は英語圏では一般的ではないため、ここでは意味が伝わる表現にした。
there and back — 「往復で」。日常会話で使いやすい表現。
just in case — 「念のため」「万一に備えて」。
self-conscious — 人からどう見られているかを「意識してしまう」「人目が気になる」。今回のタイトルの「人の目が少し気になった」に近い表現。
#SundayWalk #WalkingStick #NeighborhoodLife #EverydayThoughts #MountKilimanjaro #Kamakura #JapanesePathologist
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