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Wait for a taxi
I went to bed early and thought I had a good night’s sleep, but when I looked at the clock, it was still before the date changed.
Wondering what to do, I crawled into bed again.
I had a cup of noodles for breakfast.
When I started to boil water, I thought I forgot to get chopsticks and a fork so I had no choice but to eat with my hands, but I was moved by the plastic fork folded out of a cup of noodles.
I was told that a taxi would come to the front of the hotel at 8:15 a.m., so I left the room just after 8 a.m. and checked out.
I sat in the lobby sipping water from the water server and waiting for a taxi.
It was now 8:15.
The taxi is still not coming.
It was now 8:30.
I got a little anxious and asked the man at the front desk who answered me yesterday, “Will a taxi come? a
He answered it was hard to reach the hotel because of the traffic.
Sorry for my impatience.
At 8:45 a.m., a taxi came.
I thanked him and got into a taxi.
I had a good conversation with the taxi driver and reached my destination, Kuala Woh.
Unlike when Kazuo Unno visited when he was younger (he swam down the river to the shore while nearly drowning), Kuala Woh seems to have become a bit of a tourist attraction, and the entrance fee was necessary.
When I tried to pay the taxi fare, the driver told me to wait for a while because he didn’t have any change and ran out to the receptionist.
After a while, he handed me the admission ticket and the change for the taxi fare minus the amount.
Oh my gosh, he went to buy an admission ticket.
I said thank you and said goodbye to the taxi brother.
Encountering Raja Brooke
The national butterfly of Malaysia is the red-bellied birdwing butterfly.
Also known as Raja Brooke.
I’m finally going to meet them.
As a matter of fact, I felt like I wouldn’t know what I was doing in Malaysia if I didn’t see a Raja Brooke.
(If I don’t meet, that will be another good memory.)
As I stepped into the park and looked around, something flashed in front of me.
There’s definitely something here.
I came to the river where a hot spring was boiling.
There was still nothing there.
It’s after 9am, so it’s still early for activities, I thought, so I sat down on a stone in the riverbed and zoned out.
A black object that looked like a bird passed in front of me.
It was not a bird.
It was a Raja Brooke.
I was riveted by the sight of a butterfly soaring gracefully through the air.
I pressed the shutter in fascination.
When I headed upstream a little bit, there were about three of them sucking water.
Even when I got pretty close to them, they didn’t try to run away.
The Insect Boyhood
I was reminiscing a lot about the old days as I looked at Raja Brook, which continues to absorb water.
I want to see the insects. When was the last time I went forward with such innocence?
The dream I had long ago of going to Malaysia to photograph insects had come true. (I didn’t get a shot of Phylliidae, though.)
I had forgotten about that dream for a long time.
As I grew up, insects became a distant presence, and my interest shifted to anime and video games instead, and before I knew it, I was a
stupid who wanted to make movies.
I was unaware that my childhood was formed by nature, such as insects, and I can’t help but feel that I was so poisoned by the values of mass production and mass consumption that I lost sight of something important for a long time.
The reason I started taking pictures of insects as an adult was because I thought it would be fun to play Pokémon Go in real life. However, the weekly contact with the insects definitely changed something in me.
It seems to me that insects taught me all the wonders of “being alive” in my early days.
From insects, I learned and philosophized about the excitement of changing from chrysalis to butterfly, and the fear of being eaten and parasitized.
I’ve been living for years in a state where I’ve lost the opportunity to think about the wonder of being “alive” and vaguely wanting to make a film about anything and everything. I now think that I just wanted to consume the game after all, taking the words “experience is important when making a movie.
Maybe I should have gone back to nature earlier.
Nonetheless, it is this regret that drives me now.
Then I muttered to the Raja Brook in Kuala War.
“I’m home.”
To be continued…
