We took it into our apartment and after inserting a paper from the printer we happily discovered that it still worked even though it had been shut away for perhaps seventeen years. She pressed various keys and she giggled at the 'clacking' sound that pressing the keys produced. She started playing quite happily and then jumped back in shock when the auto carriage return occurred seven keys after the bell.
Typewriters were never a big thing here in Japan despite many brave attempts by various people and companies. I of course had one because I could write in English and Romaji but it only ever was a novelty item. Most things here were hand written before going off to the printers and I can tell you that even though most companies would have a small team of girls who would carefully scribe 'clean copies' of company documents, most companies had so much paperwork that it was quite usual for such documents to be sent out to contractors. This long drawn out process created huge delays and backlogs which made doing business with our country pretty slow.
Imagine it - a team of girls writing by hand, clean and error free copies on squared manuscript paper. These would be sent to an editor who would cross things out, make corrections and then this would be sent to the printer who had the awful task of deciphering the original text, the editorial corrections and usually in a fog of smudged over-scoring. Sometimes it was so bad that the printer would send it back saying it was impossible to handle. After all, if any mistakes were made at this point then it would be the printers to blame.
Come the 1980's and technology gave us the word processor (wapuro we termed it which was short for 'waado purossesaa' and everything changed. My Father had several as early as 1982 in his business and a year later he also had one at home. This may seem like a trivial matter but please consider that in 1982 less than 5% of Japanese businesses had access to a word processor and a mere four years later in 1986, over 90% of businesses were using them to produce Japanese language documents. The boom happened because our economy was on an unparalleled high, the technology was getting better and the prices per unit fell rapidly. The awareness of such powerful tools came to be known by students and eventually these tools filtered down to High school, middle school and even elementary students began using them. As I said, not only did 90% of businesses have access by the end of 1986 but also 30% of homes had one too and this figure grew steadily. In the early 1990's the Americans exported Compaq word processors to us and they were half the price of our N.E.C's and consequently the homes that had access to one grew to over 80%. Then their eventual demise came in the latter half of the 90's when word processing software appeared for computers.
I was born in 1980 so as a child I was aware of these machines and so to me it was a fairly normal thing to have one. I was given a typewriter just to practice English. Our Father provided a word processor for us when we attended middle school upon which we each had turns to write out school reports.
Sumomo had never seen a typewriter of course and is not overly familiar with 'ABC' She and Riko have grown up in a world where MS word and its various counterparts and her phones texting are as much the 'norm' as their hand written work. My old typewriter was an antique and a novelty item however she enjoyed playing with it.
We all have returned from Atami where we stayed for five days. Atami was a place I came to as a child and now my angels enjoy it too. We stayed at the Hoshino resort which is not as close to the sea as some places but it offered good rates, it was very clean and the service was excellent and on par with us all being VIP.
We signed the angels into the children's activity club which had them swimming with other children. They went fishing on a real fishing boat, engaged in children's outdoor pursuits and visited the children's ranch where they could feed sheep and goats and see many other animals. They went tea picking and the learned and made mochi rice cakes and brought some back for us to try.
There were also children's rooms with lots of supervised activities and all this so Hitomi and I could have some time together and it allowed them to feel independent and they could play happily with the other children on holiday. Then when we all ate together in the early evening they would excitedly tell us everything.
Hitomi and I enjoyed the famous spa's and treated ourselves to a boat ride beneath the stars and the fireworks!
On the morning of my third day I was cleaning the instruments when a familiar person entered the salon and asked if she could have her hair styled. She has never been here before. There had been once cancellation and so she was fitted straight in. When her turn came she passed her place on because I was still busy with one very sweet older client. When I was free she stood and smiled and came to sit in my station chair.
After I had finished she said that she was very happy and offered me far too many compliments and that she would now use this salon as her regular. I was very pleased.