In my university baseball team, there were many high school national tournament participants and players from strong teams.
I was very happy to be able to play baseball with such players.
I thought I was on the starting line to become a professional baseball player at last.
For the first time in my life, I was proud of the place I chose.
Of course, I didn't get a chance to participate in most matches, including practice matches.
There were a lot of things that didn't go well and a lot of hard times.
Even so, my goal of becoming a professional baseball player had given me emotional support.
Every day, I was encouraging myself, saying, “I will practice and get better, and I will definitely go pro and play an active part.”
I bought and read a lot of books that motivated me.
Having read and encouraged myself like that for a while, I thought,
“Since I wanna encourage myself, don’t use other people’s words. From now on, encourage myself with my own words or words that moves my heart!”
After that, I began to write down what I feel and the words moved my heart in a notebook.
The title of the note is The Best Album of Words. haha
One of the books I read at that time was "Akihiro Nakatani Quotations" written by Akihiro Nakatani. When I saw this preface used the words "best album of words", I thought, "I wanna make my own best album of words!", which is the reason for this title. hahaha
The first thing I wrote was the word Itsudemo-hohoemi-wo.
This is Japanese and roughly means always smile.
This "Itsudemo-hohoemi-wo (composed by Kazutoshi Sakurai)" is the name of the 13th song on Mr. Children's album "IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD".
Mr.Children is one of Japan's leading rock bands. Their music has beautiful melodies and beautiful Japanese lyrics, so please give it a listen.
I don't remember what triggered it, but I became obsessed with Mr. Children when I was in my 2nd year at university.
I really loved listening to music, so I would put a Sony Walkman in my pocket and earphones in my ears, then listen to music all day long when I was alone, whether I was running or at home.
One day, I was cleaning my 6 tatami mat room full of hopes with a rent of 20,000 yen while listening to songs of Mr. Children as usual.
I fell in love with this song when I listened to the light melody flowing from my ears and the lyrics "itsudemo hohoemi wo".
I thought, "'itsudemo-hohoemi-wo' is such a great word. All right. From now on, I'll always be with a smile!"
After that, for a while, my motto became "itsudemo-hohoemi-wo", so I wrote this words on a piece of paper with all my heart, and hung it up in my room. hahaha
to be continued...
