What We Get With No Effort

Hello there!

How are you doing?

I am reading a book of Dr. John F. Demartini now.

The title in Japanese is “The Class of Dr. Demartini for becoming best of yourself (Dr. Demartini no Saiko no Jibun ga Mitsukaru Jugyo)”. It is a translated book. I am assuming the original book title is this, “The Values Factor“.

I never like reading in English XDD. Reading is the weakest point of mine in English. Even though I worked as a translator in the past, oooooops XDDDD!!

I am reading this because I was recommended to read it from the person I am taking a seminar next month.

Dream job for me

I was chatting with one of my friends from Argentina Ariel, years back.

When we were chatting, he told me “Oh wow. This job must be your dream job, then”.

I never thought it was, but came to think about it, it was really.

Since 2006, I have been helping people from other countries to buy goods and concert tickets in Japan. I have made so many friends all over the world through this job.

Want to make friends all over the world

When I was a 4th grader, I was walking home from elementary school.

There was long stairs before I reach the house complex where I lived. I don’t remember what happened that day though, when I climbed up that long stairs, I looked back down the stairs and thought “I want to become friends with people all over the world”.

Small bud

English language always seemed to fascinate me.

I don’t remember it since I was very little but my Mom told me that she looked all over to find an English class for me when I was 5 or 6. She said I told her that I wanted to learn English.

There are English schools everywhere nowadays, but back then there were so few of them that she needed to run around to collect information.

I assume Ariel and I were talking about my memory of 4th grade when he said that phrase above about my dream job.

Until then, I really never thought of that I have accomplished something I wanted strongly.

The rules of attraction

Have you heard of the term “the rules of attraction”??

I don’t even know “the rules of attraction” is the right way to say it in English since I never read those stuff in English. It is called “Hikiyose no housoku” in Japanese.

Basically it means we attract what we want. What we are thinking will be shown in the real life.

I have friends in more than 20 countries (it was more than 20 when I counted last time, could count how many but let’s skip it because the number is not important).

However, it is strange that I never tried anything intentionally to accomplish that. I do remember thinking “I want to become friends with people all over the world” when I was in 4th grade, but I have forgotten all about it for a long time verbally. It was probably there so naturally that I did not even have to think about it.

I have never made any effort to make it happen.

What effort meant for me

What image do you have for the word “effort”??

To me it was “do something I don’t want to do to realize something I need to make it happen”. So effort meant chore, pain, something absolutely not fun for me.

I think that was because I have done so many things I didn’t want to do but someone told me that I need to do. Studying for entrance exam for universities was one of them. What else? I cannot think of them at the moment but should be many of them that I have done.

The things happened to me

OK, let’s get back to the topic on “the rules of attraction”.

According to “the rules of attraction”, we get what we want. I also read that “you think about something strongly then you can forget about it”. “It may work better if you don’t persist on it”.

I am writing this from my memory, so may not be precise what they are telling, however what happened to me about making friends all over the world was this “thought about it strongly then forgot about it”.

The passion within me to become friends with people all over the world was very natural, that I didn’t even have to think about it, but it came along.

Went to the US to escape from the hated school

I was in a private girl’s juinor high & high school.

Stupid it may sound, I was not really aware that “girl’s school” means “zero boy”. Yeah, kids can be ignorant, right?

So I went to the “girl’s school” thinking that means few boys.

I don’t remember if that was the first day or several days later entering the school, I was pretty shocked to find out that there were NO BOYS at all in the school.

I was raised in a family with two brothers and fighting with boys in elementary school daily for fun, no boys seemed pretty strange to me. The first year went all right, however from the second year in the school, I started to feel very uncomfortable with stupid rules like stating the width of ribbon we wear, the color of socks we wear etc. and some of the dumb adults aka teachers in the school.

I never broke those stupid rules because I had no interest in clothing and stuff however I felt very strange about that school having those rules and trying to have the students follow them.

From looking back from now, I see there were some teachers that I liked and were close, however I didn’t get along with some of those who had strong influence in the school such as the head teacher of the grade, the feeling of disliking the school gradually grew within me.

I was telling my Mom about it, telling that I want to change the school where my old friends from elementary school go but I think she was too obsessed with bad relationship of her mother-in-law and other stuff with my brother. Most probably what I was telling her did not reached her (<– I came to think this way very recently, and then I could let go of it. Funny it may sound I kind of thought that my life started to go wrong from here).

Anyways, I tried to get out the school from high school (we have entrance exams before entering high school) but for some reason I did not even take entrance exams to other high schools.

It was most probably a combination of these two things.

1. My parents did not want me to take the exam to end up going lower lever school.
   The school I went was kind of “high level” school and believed to have more chances to get in to so-called a “good university”. My brother failed the university entrance exams multiple years at the time, so I assume that influenced my parents wanting me to stay that school I didn’t enjoy.
2. My will was not strong enough.

Anyways one day when I was in the first year in high school, one of my friends who also did not like that school came up to me and said “Hey Nozomi, do you want to take an exam for exchange program? If we pass, we can get out of this school”. It was a great opportunity for me that I can get out of that school for whole year so I took the chance and passed the exam.

I passed it most probably because I studied all the English textbooks I got for three years in junior high the summer prior that year aiming to take the entrance exam for another high school. I was making shit grade in English till then XDDD.

So this was kind of the first step that I took without noticing to have friends outside Japan. Luckily I made many friends that year in the U.S. I still contact with many of my friends from the exchange year through facebook now.

One of my besties had an American boyfriend

Now after entering a university, one of my best friends dated an American guy.

My friend, her boyfriend and I hung out often so I used English on and off. I also went to an English school on weekend for forgot how long but did for sometime in the university.

Found some friends through an international house

After graduating from university, I worked at a computer company. When I had the job interview they said I can use English at work, but there were almost zero chance to speak English at work. There was one American guy in another department one stair down at my work but I don’t remember talking to him in English.

Remember one time I spoke in English at that work was when the American guy’s Mom called from the U.S. and I answered the phone. That was about it.

So I found an international house that had a notice board. There people put up contact info for language exchange and such and I found 3 friends there to hung out back then.

Had an English blog site

At around year 32, I had a blog on a British platform called “20six”.

I was writing on Japan and made several friends through that site. We communicate daily to have just very ordinary conversation like what we did today and stuff but it was very much fun.

Nick from the U.K., one of the friends I made on that site asked me one day.

“Hey Nozomi. Would you do me favor? I am a fan of ‘THE YELLOW MONKEY’. I want to buy their CDs. I looked all over London but couldn’t find them. Will you buy them and send them to me??”

This all started my business helping people from other countries buy things in Japan. I can’t thank Nick enough for asking me that. I made so many great friends through my business. If you know someone named “Nick Lines” from the U.K., will you share this post to him please? I truly want to thank him. I lost contact with him after the platform made major change. Everyone got spread and lost contact with most of them.

Become friends a German at a local post office

Since I started my business on eBay back in 2006 (I don’t have the eBay store running anymore though), I needed to go to the post office nearby my house daily back then.

I saw a non-Japanese at the post office whom I had seem a few times on a bus.

It was very crowded at the post office that day and the guy was sitting and waiting for his turn. I needed to get the waiting ticket and wait too. So I sat besides him and asked him where he was from. The waiting time was too long that he had to leave for class he taught so he asked me the person who he met that day to make the payment for him XDDD. So we exchanged the phone numbers.

Stephan is his name. He is a super friendly, fun person. He had BBQ every Tuesday at his place so people could gather and make friends. He invited me to the BBQ and I made a lot of friends there.

Anyways it is getting too long about my story.

Those things happen without effort

The bottom line is I MADE NO EFFORT TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE.

I hate effort as I mentioned. I didn’t even think that “Oh, I want to become friends with people from other countries”, never.

It was all spontaneous this and that but in the long run, I ended up having all the friends in the world.

I am learning many little things about myself recently and starting to understanding why I was depressed so many times in the past. I was SO OFF from who I really was, what I wanted to be for real.

Hope this discover goes on!! OK! Thanks for reading.