A 'note' received from a 'Neba-tomo' in Kobe

【Stories about friends】


An unauthorized series about my unique friends.

A love letter from me to my friends.

Part 4.

A story about my 'Neba-tomo', Y-ringo, who lives in Kobe.
(Here is a question: what does the 'Neba' in 'Neba-tomo' mean?)

Our meeting dates back to when I was 19.
It was shortly after I moved to Tokyo from Osaka.

I received an email from someone through a mailing list.

"I'm also a fan of JIRO. The person I like has the same last name as you, mika-san, is from Kansai, and is the same age, so I was curious and decided to email you! Nice to meet you."

It was something like that.

Our 'Neba-tomo' life started from there.

Oh, by the way, JIRO refers to JIRO, the bassist of GLAY.
At the time, I loved visual kei bands, and I was a huge fan of GLAY in particular.

I first met Y-ringo at a GLAY concert.

From the moment we met, we were laughing hysterically.
I don't know why, but I remember the two of us laughing our heads off.

She had many piercings and her red hair was very cute.

She had a cartilage piercing.

A cartilage piercing was a place I didn't have the courage to get pierced.
I have seven piercings myself, but I just couldn't bring myself to get one in my cartilage. A friend who had one told me that when she got it done, it made a 'clunk' sound and hurt like crazy, so I was too scared.

She had a piercing in that cartilage.

"Cartilage piercings are so cute."

I said with a look of admiration, and

"But look, my ear is about to tear!"

She showed me while laughing out loud.
When I looked closely, her ear cartilage really did look like it was about to tear and was a purplish-red color.

At that moment, I swore to myself that I would definitely skip the cartilage piercing.

I remember that was the first topic we got excited about while waiting for the GLAY concert to start.

She is from Kobe and lives in Saitama,
I am from Osaka and live in Yokohama.

She was a vocational student,
I was a university student.

Even though we were apart, we were young and had the mobility to travel anywhere, so we often met up and hung out.

We decided to pull an all-nighter at a karaoke box in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, singing GLAY songs.

We were young.

The two of us sang GLAY songs all night until morning.

We were young.

At dawn, as the two of us were walking through Kabukicho, several hosts who had finished their shifts approached us.

We were flanked on both sides by the hosts.

When we ignored them and kept walking, some of them stood in front of us, blocking our path.


When we tried to go left, the hosts followed.
When we tried to go right, the hosts followed.

“Hey, move out of the way!!!”
“Whoa! Kansai dialect!! Where are you girls from?”

Having just moved to Tokyo, we still hadn't lost our thick Kansai accents.

While we were being hassled, I felt a presence behind me.

Surprised, I turned around and saw that one of the hosts had his hand inside my backpack.

“Hey, what do you think you're doing!!! Don't touch my stuff without asking!!!!”

I snapped, grabbed Y-ringo's hand, and we both ran away.

“They're running!”

The hosts chased after us.

However, we were incredibly fast runners.

Once we got out of Kabukicho, the hosts stopped chasing us.

Youth is wonderful.

I remember episodes with Y-Ringo.

Once, Y-Ringo called me in a panic, saying she was being followed by a strange foreigner, and she ran away while giving me a play-by-play account. When we went to a hot spring in Hakone together, we were accosted by two drunk men sitting at the next table during dinner at the inn, but Y-Ringo used her signature conversational skills to brilliantly calm them down. I just sat there next to her, eating silently.

...We sure had a lot of stories about being accosted.

Also, there was a time we went to Fuji-Q Highland in the (damn) cold of February. Because it was freezing, we had the place to ourselves.

Endless FUJIYAMA.

We were young.

We went to many GLAY concerts together and hung out a lot.

We both reached the time of graduation; she returned to Kobe, and I headed down the path of theater.

We both started walking our own paths, and we couldn't see each other as easily as before.

Even so, we always made sure to send messages to each other at the beginning of the year and on our respective birthdays.

More than 20 years have passed since I first met Y-Ringo.

I told her that I had started a note. She read through all of my articles at once.

It seems she was deeply moved because I had written about parts of myself she didn't know.

A few days later.

I received a package from Y-Ringo. When I opened it,

there was a notebook inside.

I had just returned from picking up my child from kindergarten, and without even remembering to take off my ID card or the kindergarten cloth bag still hanging on my arm, I opened that 'note'.

In it were her thoughts about me and the last few years of her life that I knew nothing about.

I read it while crying.
I feel like my son is saying something in the distance, but I was absorbed in reading the 'note' from her.

I didn't know, I didn't know at all.

For the first time, I learned that so many things had happened to her, that she had faced so many things, and that she had overcome so much.

I couldn't stop my tears.

A 'note' she wrote that spanned 16 pages.

I cherished and took in every bit of her last few years.

At the same time, the days we spent laughing hysterically came back to me.

Because

she posted something like this.

20-year-old me was fighting a bear.

What on earth was I doing?

Our life as friends started with a single email.

I am so happy that our friendship is still going strong today.

And this surprise 'note' that arrived from her this time.

I feel like through our notes, our thoughts have reached each other, and our bond has deepened once again.

Oh, right. I have to say this one thing.

In the 'note' she wrote, she proceeded with the assumption that my favorite celebrity is Fumiya Takahashi, but

that's wrong. lol

Now, for the answer to the 'Neba' in 'Neba-friend' at the beginning.

Because when we are together, we talk so much that our mouths get sticky (neba-neba).

Neba-friend

If anyone guessed it, you are the best.

Y-ringo, thank you for finding me.


Do you realize
that you are made of love and kindness?

Do you realize
that you are an endlessly funny person?
That the people around you are smiling?

Do you realize
that happiness will never let you go?


I will continue to be on your side.
I am rooting for everything in your life.

forever my Neba-friend!!