"You can't ever buy back that time."

“The office worker in Japan is always being used by somebody,” Atsuko Watanabe says in a plain, stating-a-fact tone of voice. “They have no freedom at all.”

Atsuko is always making these kind of statements. But there’s strangely no anger or churning to her voice. She’s simply stating something she feels is obvious to anyone who wants to see.

She continues, “and if you are being used by someone, you have very little freedom of heart. That’s the saddest thing for the office worker; being told what to do. And because he’s always in a hurry, there’s no energy left to think. In Japan, they just don’t grant you time.” She strokes the orange and white cat sitting in her lap, and says, “And if you are selling your time, no matter how much money you get, you can’t ever buy back that time. I knew from when I was eleven or twelve years old that I didn’t want to live that kind of life.”

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