Futagu Vol. 2 -EN-
enui 7/21/2026
Yasuragi
Interest notes / Seeds of Semi-Sci-Fi Curiosity
“Three, two, one, okay. From the word ‘okay’ onward, money all over the world shall have no value.”
If the most important person in the world said that, what would happen?
I went to a ramen shop.
The franchise ramen shop that used to be over there apparently has nobody inside anymore.
Across from it, the stubborn old man’s ramen shop is still there.
I took the seat right in front of the old man.
“I don’t have any money. Is that okay?”
When I asked, he said,
“Only people who get it can eat our pig.”
He let me eat for free. I don’t really know why.
I wanted to know how the old man felt.
Then I wanted to read about the ecology of pigs, so I decided to head to the university library.
There was no one at the university.
At the university in the next town, the one people call an old Imperial University, apparently there are still quite a lot of people.
Something about dialogue in the same physical place being important, or whatever.
This is an F-rank university whose purpose I don’t really understand.
Everywhere, children are running races or playing tag.
On the connecting corridor, there was also a person sleeping wrapped in a blanket. I had seen that person sleeping under a bridge before.
When I entered the library, there were a few people.
There was already a girl reading a book about the ecology of pigs.
“Did you eat it?”
I asked, and she said,
“I did, but I left a little. I felt bad about it, so I thought I should learn about the pig.”
She said it looking slightly downward, her face twitching.
I told her I would come back and read it another time, temporarily handed over the right to read, and went for a walk outside.
I needed to use the bathroom, so I headed to a convenience store.
At the entrance, a group in yankee-style delinquent fashion was squatting while eating rice balls and bread.
“You wanna go in here?”
one of them asked, so I replied,
“I just wanted to borrow the restroom.”
They didn’t seem especially likely to bully me, and they didn’t try to shake me down.
I used the bathroom normally and went back outside.
The yankees were drinking dessert smoothies and passing them around.
“This is lukewarm. Lukewarm. Actually kind of good. Try some. You get it?”
I felt like moving my body, so I went to a batting center.
There were a few people.
But the pitching machines weren’t running.
Several groups were there, gently tossing soft rubber baseballs from a diagonal angle to whoever stood in the batter’s box, and having them hit those.
There was one pair of young people who looked like a couple.
The woman was standing in the batter’s box.
“Your tosses are so bad! lol”
“Huh? Sorry, sorry. It’s harder than it looks.”
As the man was saying this and failing to do it well, a man with thick arms, wearing a T-shirt from a baseball gear brand, came over and said,
“Brother, relax your hand. Set the top of the parabola around your girlfriend’s belly button, then just kind of toss it up.”
After I saw him start throwing a little better, I went into an empty batting box.
The machine didn’t work, so I used one of the bats there and took about fifteen practice swings.
The thick-armed man was clearly watching my swing as if checking it, so I got a bad feeling and left the box pretty quickly.
When I went out of the building, there was the bank where I usually withdraw money.
I got curious and went inside. A well-built man in a suit, wearing a stocking over his head, was standing in a commanding pose on top of the teller counter.
“Hand over the money! Fill this bag with as much as you can!”
He made the shape of a pistol with his hand and said bang, bang toward the ceiling with his mouth.
A woman in a bank teller’s uniform, half-smiling, said,
“Please forgive us with this. This is all of it!”
and stuffed ten or twenty bundles of ten-thousand-yen bills into the bag.
Tarachine
Life logs / Transcript of a monologue
『When a Pockmark Looks Like a Pockmark』
While watching Ultra Q with affection for all its old technical limits, one shot of the airplane instruments refuses to make sense. A proverb about loving even the flaws in what you love turns itself inside out, just once.
###
There is a Japanese proverb, “abata mo ekubo.”
Abata means rough skin, pockmarks. Ekubo means the little dent in your cheek when you smile, a symbol of cuteness.
If it is the pockmark of someone you love, it can even look like a dimple. It is a Japanese proverb with a nuance close to “love is blind.”
Ever since I was little, I have liked Ultraman, Japan’s national hero. I would not say I am some serious maniac about it, but if there are goods around, I look at them, I pick them up, and if someone says the name of a monster, as long as it is a reasonably famous one, I can usually recognize it.
These days, I pay for and sometimes watch “TSUBURAYA IMAGINATION,” the subscription service run by Tsuburaya Productions, the production company that made Ultraman. It has archived and made into a database the old Ultraman series, related works, and TV programs from that whole area.
The ones famous around the world are probably the original Ultraman and Ultraseven, those sorts of titles. But before the Ultraman series with Ultraman in it, there was an SF drama called Ultra Q. It aired back in the age of black-and-white television.
I assume it has 28 episodes and ends there, probably, and when I found out that Ultra Q was available inside the subscription service, I watched all of it recently.
Basically, it is old technology, so it is not like today, where you can make a giant monster look huge and smooth, or make a monster fly through the sky as smoothly as CG.
When a monster flies, or when an airplane flies, depending on the light, because they are models, you can faintly see the acrylic wires holding them up.
The voices too, it is not as if microphones were hanging down near the actors’ mouths or over their heads, so the lines are dubbed in afterward.
Technically, it is still very rough. But the ideas and the messages are wonderful, so basically I enjoyed it the whole time.
Under those harsh technical limits of the past, the fact that they managed to make 28 episodes with that much heat in them—I basically watched it with the feeling of “abata mo ekubo.” But in episode 27, there was one part I just could not stop noticing.
Simply put, it was an airplane scene in the drama. The captain and the first officer—well, the pilot and co-pilot, I guess—are in the airplane, and they get caught in some terrible turbulence. At that moment, the co-pilot says loudly to the main pilot,
“Look. The numbers are dropping.”
Then, as expected, the captain snaps his eyes over to the instruments with all the various numbers for the airplane.
First, there is a big close-up of his face looking at them, and then the gauges get a one-shot close-up. They are probably very realistic gauges. You know, those needle-type meters.
There are tons of them across the whole screen, and on top of that it is black and white, and all of them are swinging around, going off in different directions, shaking and doing all kinds of things. From the viewer’s side, I have absolutely no idea which number is dropping.
Even if I watched it a second time, I still probably would not know which gauge’s number was going down.
Couldn’t they have done something about that scene?
As a sign that the story was about to enter a big development, probably some kind of airplane-crash situation, it was just a little too rough. The pockmark simply looked like a pockmark.
That is the story.
Bisho-An
Micro fictions / narrative works
Work: The Examination
The Work
Doctor: There are hundreds of thousands of named illnesses in the world.
Patient: Which one do I have?
Doctor: None of them.
Patient: Physically?
Doctor: Your physical age is about fifteen years younger than your actual age.
Patient: What about my organs?
Doctor: Quite normal.
Patient: Work has been keeping me very busy lately. What about mentally?
Doctor: Your brain waves and electrocardiogram are extremely stable.
Patient: Really? I heard that these days, everyone has at least one illness.
Doctor: Yes. This is highly abnormal. Let’s admit you immediately.
“When abnormality becomes the standard, the normal person receives the diagnosis.”
Rinri
Soundscapes / auditory meditations
0:00 - 0:07:42:00
🎧 Track: CleaningToilet
🧠 Field Note / Background
🗂 Technical Info
- Recorder: RODE Wireless PRO,ZOOM M2 MicTrak
- Format: 48kHz / 24bit / Stereo
🪶 Metadata
- Recorded: 20260706, Home
- Duration: 0:07:42:00
- Genre: ambient,lifestyle
- License: All Rights Reserved
Endnote / Reflection
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© 2026 不得井（enui） / Futagu
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This work is part of the Futagu series — a four-layered cycle exploring consciousness through curiosity, reflection, creation, and sound.
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