Ippo fumidaseba - A single step

I moved down the hill. Literally.

I took this picture from the front of my apartment. That green fence is where I used to live. It's so close that I moved a good chunk of my things down the hill by loading into my backpack or suitcase and walking.

By the way, walking down the street with a used microwave always makes you feel like a thief. Always. Just in case you wondered.

So anyhow, my old place and my new place are so close that you wouldn't think much would change.

Surprisingly everything's different.

My new place is on the road that's the shortcut from the train station to the high school. This means though I hardly used to see these kids before, I now trip over my students the minute I set foot outside of my door. The restaurant down the hill is now the restaurant right next door, which means that if I'm outside, I can hear who's in there. This leads to me 'accidentally' running into people all the time.

Up the hill is just a little gap with like 7 houses, so I hardly saw anyone before. Where I live now, the houses behind me are really dense, so I've lots of neighbours. Many of them are the guys from my festival team. I'm hoping that this leads to more hanging out. The old apartment was kind of at an intersection of routes, you had several choices of which to take. Where I live now, you don't really. This means you walk the same route more frequently. Yet again, more running into people.








One of my favourite Japanese TV shows is Atashinchi no Danshi (Literally: My boys). In trying to get the 'hikkikomori' (shut-in) son to come out of his room, Chisato (the star) says ' If you take one step forward, the whole world changes. ' (Ippo fumidaseba sekai ga kawaru. 一歩踏み出せば世界が変わる。)

That's what it feels like. I've just moved down the hill, but somehow, I'm miles closer to everything and everyone.

And there's a writing application to today's post too.

Point of view. At first POV doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's like my moving down the hill. A different POV means running into different people, seeing different scenes. Some things changing and some things don't happen at all.

So how do you pick a POV? You could weigh all the pros and cons of what story you end up with depending on where your narrator stands or who he or she is or how he or she talks.

Or you could just move down the hill and see what the world looks like.

Do you have any experiences with the world changing with a single step?