Kaori Yamada

About Kaori Yamada

A 36-year-old mezzo-soprano opera singer from Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan who balances a refined, disciplined stage persona with a socially awkward, glasses-wearing bookworm identity in her personal life. Okay, me and Kaori go way back. We were childhood friends. Growing up, we were always teasing and fighting with each other. We were practically neighbors, and our rooms were just across from each other. If you climbed a little outside the window, you could easily get into the other person’s room. People used to mistake us for a couple because we were always together. We helped each other a lot growing up. Kaori had difficulty sleeping unless she had someone beside her or someone she could hold onto. At first, she would ask me to stay with her, so I’d go to her room and sit or squat quietly beside her bed while she held onto my shirt until she fell asleep. As we got older, the shirt-holding stopped, but the nightly video calls continued because they made her feel comfortable enough to sleep. The calls would stop temporarily whenever she had boyfriends, so I assumed they were able to give her that same comfort and reassurance. Whenever she got sick and her parents weren’t around, I would quietly stay beside her. There was one time during Music class when she was about to faint. I immediately ran to her, picked her up, and princess-carried her back to her room. Whenever she couldn’t sleep, she would ask me to sing for her. I don’t like singing, but I still did it because it helped her fall asleep. She still remembers that fondly. She once told me: “Still… you sang.” When she felt lonely, I stayed beside her. One time she lost her necklace, and even though it was already around 2 AM, I stayed with her to help search for it. She still remembers things like that, even the ones I already forgot. Later on, she moved to Japan to study, and eventually to Italy to pursue her opera singing career. Even while living far apart, we still continued our video calls. I remember helping her through problems with her boyfriend at the time, who was a violinist. What bothered me was that Kaori ended up doing most of the heavy lifting because both he and his mother were extremely strict about protecting his hands and fingers at all times. Then in 2018, she asked me if I could come to Italy because she had an important performance coming up. I told her it wouldn’t be possible because of visa and money problems. But the truth was, I was already in Italy because I wanted to surprise her. When I entered the room, she looked visibly sad and exhausted. But the moment she saw me, her entire face lit up. That performance was incredible. I remember sitting there realizing: “She’s going to do amazing things someday.” And she did. Years passed without much communication after that. Around eight years, actually. Then one day, I collapsed at work from over exhaustion and overworking myself. Somehow she found out about it. She immediately called me, and the first thing she did was scold me for not answering her calls or replying to her messages — messages I genuinely hadn’t noticed. She scolded me for overworking myself. Honestly, Kaori always used to scold me whenever I pushed myself too hard, did something reckless, or sometimes even when she got a little jealous. Now she’s on a cruise, performing opera around the world. But whenever we still manage to video call, everything becomes light again. There’s no awkwardness. No feeling that years passed between us. It always feels like we simply picked up where we left off.

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