The very first chewing gum I saw in my life was a stick of  Japanese GREEN GUM, presented to me in autumn of 1973 by our neighbor who traveled around the Pacific. That time, by the way, such a tour was not an ordinary thing for an average Soviet citizen, and not only because it's cost (which was about a half-year average engineer's wages), but for certain political restrictions as well.
Overjoyed with the present, with its strict and fine design of the letters, shining foil wrapper and unfamiliar, certainly "foreign" aroma, I chewed it quickly and had swallowed the gum right before the grown-ups warned me not to do it. There was a minute confusion with the apparent fear on my face, and then a loud burst of laughter from the men with the following caustic jokes about the consequences of my reckless meal.  I was about to cry when the same neighbor, trying to soothe me, gave me another stick of gum with some mysterious letters on it. They were the Japanese characters. I brought the gum back home and, wishing to be on the safe side, first asked my elder sister, who was studying English, to translate the wrapper. She said she couldn't. Then I asked my Mom who knew German, with the same result. As the last resort I tried my Dad who knew everything, as I thought, but he failed, too. I was puzzled. Should I return the gum back? Oh no, it was too a precious pray to loose. I sniffed it every day, took it to the school to boast to my classmates, and unwrapped and wrapped it back a hundred of times. After all the wrapper lost its gloss, the edges folded up and rounded, and the whole thing was about to tear into three pieces.  But still nobody could tell me what those strange inscriptions meant. The only thing I knew now certainly was that they were in Japanese. Cautiously I asked that neighbor how had he managed to buy it in Japan, namely how had he named it in the shop, but he answered he had just used the word "kore", which meant "this", and the gesture language while shopping in Japan.
I decided I needed more such wrappers to compare and analyze them, and started to ask my friends, my parents and their friends to leave the gum wrappers for me. Some joked, some smiled, some said they had no, but some really gave me them. Unfortunately, nothing helped me with that Japanese gum.
To create a stimulus for myself I decided not to touch the gum until I have understood the inscription. I took off the wrapper, put the gum into the envelope and wrote, "Do not open!" on it. But all my attempts to decode were in vain.
Then I buried the wrapper somewhere inside my drawer and forgot about it for good, I thought. But it was not to be. Somewhere in a year I came to our neighbors' daughter to see her cleaning her room. By her Mom's order she was getting rid of all that youngster's scrap, which has a naughty custom to accumulate in children's rooms. I decided to help her and in some time she took a carton box, looked inside and then dropped it to a garbage bin. The box opened and I noticed some chewing gum wrappers inside. There were familiar GREEN GUMs, JUICY FRUITs and some unknown ones but with the same mysterious characters on them! I nearly picked them up, but met a suspicious look from the girl. "What are you looking for in the garbage?", she asked and made me redden to the tips of my ears. "Nothing", I replied. "Do you want to keep that old box for yourself?", she said. God, if she could only imagine how much I did want to do it!  But I couldn't let her think I'm interested in wrappers and that stuff which apparently was a girlish hobby. I should say that in those years boys were advised to go in for sports, make aircraft or submarine models, or to collect toy cars at least. Collecting of candy wrappers, cooking recipes and pocket calendars was considered as purely girls' hobbies.
The decision came soon. When the bin was almost full I asked her to let me go out to the yard and empty it to the garbage container. Of course she agreed and I rushed down with the bin swinging and my heart pounding. Down in the yard I carefully checked the contents of the bin and found that sacred box. Oh, what a joy it was to bring it home and draw the colored wrappers out one by one, put them side to side like a carpet on the table and tremble with the feeling they are "from there".
I put aside all the familiar, i.e. Western wrappers, and concentrated on Japanese ones. One by one I inspected the characters with a magnifying glass, copied them into my notebook and tried to decipher that enigmatic language. I tried to find some logic in their design, drawing and position. Some time later I bought a Japanese textbook and a dictionary, and then came the breakthrough! I managed to read the words, which the grown-ups, including my Dad, failed to read! That day I was really happy and proud with myself.
Then I chewed the gum itself, which had already started to break into pieces and almost lost its aroma, and returned to my everyday ordinary life, now filled with small delights and findings for my collection. But still nobody knows around it started from my being too curious about the contents of a dusty garbage container…

Alex Novikovski, born in June 1963 in the USSR. Collect gum wrappers since 1973. Studied Oriental languages (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) at the Leningrad State University, traveled a lot around the USSR and post-Soviet republics. Now live in Obninsk, Russia, work as a customs clearance manager. Bachelor.
Besides collecting wrappers go in for collecting coins, reading history, fishing and photo.
 

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