There’s no comparison between listening to music in a large concert hall with other people and being so close you can feel the performer’s breath. It’s not a question of which is better or more valuable. The joy of music resides in both, although the experience might be different. The glistening of the world as the morning sun rises, the glowing as it sets – who can say which is better? The morning sun and evening sun are the very same sun, yet the form of their beauty differs. That’s what I figure, in any case.

You can’t compare them. And it’s pointless to try. An object that holds no value to many people can to someone else be utterly precious. The desire to have a world-class pianist play your tuned piano in a concert hall may be a noble goal for some – but I felt that my vocation lay elsewhere.

I would not aim to become a concert piano tuner.

It might be foolish to decide something like that at this stage. It takes years of experience, training, dedication – and even then only a handful of lucky people will ever make it. But denying that possibility now might be seen as a form of running away.

Gradually, though, it was becoming clear to me. Music is no competition – and if that’s the case, it holds even truer for tuners. A piano tuner’s work lies far beyond the realm of competition. If anything, a tuner should aim for a certain state of being, rather than a place on the podium, a ranking in some race.

Bright, quiet, crystal-clear writing that evokes fond memories, that seems a touch sentimental yet is unsparing and deep, writing as lovely as a dream, yet as exact as reality.

I would summon up those lines from the writer Tamiki Hara, lines I’d read so often they were etched in my memory. Saying them aloud raised my spirits. No other words could better express what I aim for in my tuning.

A call came informing me my beloved grandmother was on her deathbed. I rushed back home to the mountains but didn’t make it in time. She had already breathed her last.

The funeral was a small one, attended only by my family, a few relatives and the villagers.