Chapter 196: Memories of Teenage Years
Masayoshi Kishimoto and Makoto Natsui skulked around outdoors for a while before they reentered the house. As they passed by the disk rental store, they went in and rented all of the granddaddy of idol dramas, Tokyo Love Story.
The disk rental stores in Japan are completely different from those in China. The former has a special section for renting out **** movies, which is, after all, completely legal.
The latter, even if there are also **** movies for rent, is still illegal, sneaking around. After entering the store, as if the underground party joint general, ask the boss words are, have that kind of movie no?
The boss will first look at people like plainclothes police, and then is towards the store door to take a look, and finally is either to bring people into another small room to choose that kind of film, or is the roller shutter door or something to pull down half, and then take out that kind of film out to let the person choose.
And the daily rental price for that kind of movie was higher than the normal one. There were not only adults, but from time to time there were student parties as well.
At that time, it was still a sign of courage among friends, especially for high school students to rent that kind of movie. As a former post-80s Masayoshi Kishimoto, he knew that the sex education of his generation did not come from the “health and hygiene” taught in the school classroom, but from that kind of movie.
That kind of movie for China after 80’s sex education and sexual enlightenment is played a role in the credit. This is an irrefutable fact.
He remembers very clearly that the first time he watched that kind of film was in the second grade of junior high school. A group of boys in the class gathered at noon in a classmate’s home, red face is excited.
The whole process is highly excited, afraid that they missed a shot. Even in the afternoon class, is still excited, face flushed still long time to keep.
Seen that kind of film boys also gathered together in the classroom is aftertaste hard to get rid of some of the wonderful hot chat, resulting in those who have not seen that kind of film in the class of boys know is envious.
They have asked, the next time to see that kind of movie to call on him. If a girl inadvertently heard an ear, blushing face immediately ran away.
With the passage of time, see that kind of movie more often, and then grow up to adulthood, work, especially with a personal computer, will no longer have the patience to the whole kind of movie from start to finish to watch.
This is basically what happens to post-80s urban kids. A lot of post-80s rural kids only saw the so-called movies for the first time when they got to college.
They were far more shocked than the city kids were when they first saw the movie physically. Then there are the delinquent teenagers who go to black video halls and gather with young people, middle-aged people, and old people to watch those kinds of movies.
Masayoshi Kishimoto’s memories of his lost teenage years in his previous life are awakened by this walk into a video rental store. For this reason, he also remembered another thing.
At this time, in 1999, China, by Jackie Chan image endorsement of the love more VCD that was a big hit, once the Chinese home appliance industry is one of the most successful brands. The founder, Hu Zhibiao, is also considered a legend.
However, next year, that is, the year 2000, love more VCD will go bankrupt. Such a from scratch, from small to large, from glory to ruin, only about four years.
Natsui Makoto, who had returned home, didn’t go straight to the living room and ran to the kitchen. After washing her hands at the sink, she went inside the refrigerator to get fruits, preparing to make a fruit assorted platter.
Masayoshi Kishimoto instead went straight to the living room. He turned on the television and DVD player respectively. He put the disc of the first episode of Tokyo Love Story into the DVD player before switching the channel to the one that the TV set was dedicated to playing movies on.
After waiting for a moment, his own home surround sound stereo resounded with a musical intro that was capable of awakening a personal memory of the movie.
Masayoshi Kishimoto couldn’t help but sing along with a little excitement, using the remote control in his right hand as a microphone.
After Oda and Masashi finished singing the theme song “Sudden Love” along with the opening credits, and the movie was about to officially begin, he pressed the pause button in his hand.
Masayoshi Kishimoto turned around and sat down on the long couch surface, patiently waiting for Makoto Natsui to come over with a fruit plate before the two of them could watch it together.
He couldn’t help and muttered to himself as he suddenly recited the year 1999 over and over again. He himself, at this time in his previous life, was just about to graduate from junior high school and prepare for the midterm exams in a few months.
His early love didn’t happen in the middle school stage like a good number of boys, but in the elementary school stage. His first crush was not the few cute-looking girls in his class, but the young language teacher who had just joined the workforce.
He remembers very clearly that his elementary school language teacher was a local college graduate. If this is put aside in twenty years later, it is simply a joke above the educational level.
In the university town, ten bricks thrown down at random, hit the ten inside will be able to have seven undergraduates. As for the remaining three, all hit the graduate students.
This year in mainland China is both the beginning of the college entrance examination expansion, but also the beginning of the gradual devaluation of education. At this time, the media advocated all the good things about the expansion of university enrollment, but intentionally avoided the problem of employment after graduation.
After all, after 1996, university graduates are no longer assigned. Self-employment is a nice way of saying that the group of poor college students who did not have any social relationship, any social background, or any access to the society originally expected to change their fate by going to college, but they opened up a very difficult road of job hunting.
They have exhausted all the resources of their families and are even heavily in debt. The physical and mental pressure on them was not ordinary.
In addition, the Asian financial turmoil, which started in the second half of 1997 and ended only at the end of 1998, had a negative impact on the entire Chinese land. Even Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were not spared.
At the same time, the first nationwide wave of layoffs that began in 1998 not only made many state-owned enterprises go bankrupt and close down, but also made many people unemployed.
Even now, in February 1999, there are not many new jobs, but small businesses are springing up.
The number of small businessmen who used to sell breakfast at the street level has increased from one to ten all of a sudden. At the same time, the number of unemployed people in society has also been on the rise.
University graduates and these people to grab job opportunities and rice bowls, can imagine how cruel competition. University graduates selling steamed buns, selling buns, selling vegetables and so on, it is not surprising at all.
Even so miserable that many urban families in the market after the collection, will go to the ground to pick up some unwanted leaves to go home to eat. What is even more tragic is suicide.
Not only in mainland China, but also in Japan. After the Second World War, the suicide rate in Japan peaked in the 1990s.
As for university graduates with connections, backgrounds and connections, they would naturally have a job arranged by their families.
Polarization was highlighted, and the other end of the spectrum towards affluence was getting richer and richer in numbers, while most of them were concentrated in the major cities in the south along the coasts of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and China, after all, the north was the hardest hit by the economic damage of this great change.