So, it’s Friday. I don’t hit upon any interesting ideas to write about as usual but I just wanna sleep as soon as I can. Today was a bit miserable day, the meat in the curry I had yesterday was a bit law, and my condition in the morning was terrible. I tied to vomit in the toilet but but I somehow couldn’t. So, I highly recommend that you don’t eat partially law meat.
Tiring day of human relationships
Human relationship. In other words, 90% of trouble in your life is maybe this. Today, I experienced this kind of trouble. Why some people are so stubborn enough to make trouble anytime with everyone. Why there are people who can never bend your opinion and others who can talk with flexible stance. I sometime lose meanings of how important it is to be stubborn. Hope you are not in difficult, problematic human relationships troubles.
Happy Examination Week (…just for teachers)
Today was really windy day. Windy day creates many noises. It shakes the windows. Since I live in the country side of country prefecture, there is almost no barriers that can break strong winds. Since it is the examination week, all I have to do is supervise classes and read books in the free time. I don’t need to prepare for the next class but I just need to supervise the classroom. Seems easy, right? Actually, it IS easy. Watching students doing self study, I sometimes feels like falling asleep. It is a really peaceful moment of my teacher life. You feel as if you can do anything in this time.
But, of course there is an end of the happiness (maybe Snoopy never agrees though). After the happiness, there comes the exam paper marking work. It is a bit bothering. Seeing very low score, I also feel really down, oh my teaching was such bad even I thought I made an easy one. And calculate average score at the same time. The most of Japanese test (maybe) is made to have around 60% of its total score. And if you have less then 30%, sometimes it is called “AKA-TEN” (Red Score), which often means testing again or need to take supplementary lessons.
During this time, I always remember my old high school days about 10 years ago. I was really bad at studying. I mean the way I study was really awful. I seriously thought the cause of my low score is the brand of the pen I use. So I bought nearly 50 pens during students. Crazy? I know. And the reason is because I couldn’t think as deep as I am now. I didn’t read books at that time. I totally didn’t understand the importance or value of reading at all. All I knew was that every smart students say “My pastime is reading” or like that. My pastime was watching TV laying on the sofa, and I thought I was so smart. Somebody should’ve punched me with a book.
All you need to know about Japanese Weird Custom of Valentine’s Day (2021 updated.)
So, I have been hating myself since I cannot keep writing just for a week. One of the main reason for that is because I can’t find suitable topic I should write about everyday. But then, some of my friends told me a great simple ordinal idea, which is “Why don’t you write about what happened in your daily life?” Wow..is that what we call “diary”, right? Yes…Yes… The blogging was originally meant to be diary kind of thing. Why did I miss that? Of course, I can write about my daily life because we have never spend the exact same day. Then, my story can be really unique one! Why did I forget the idea. I can write about my daily life. And I can even attach the photo of bento you eat!(almost every meal I eat is uploaded to my Instagram account)
So, yesterday was Valentine’s day, right? Japanese Valentine culture seems totally different from the western original one. If you try to give some loved one a bouquet, you are seemed like an American here. Every girls are trying to give “Tomo-Choco(Friend Chocolate)” to their friends.
Yeah, firstly I have to tell you the Japanese definition of “Valentines day” custom. Actually, there are mainly 3 types of chocolates. Not sweet or bitter one.
- GIRI-CHOCO…chocolate you give to your colleagues or people whom you don’t care. GIRI means duty. So, call of duty chocolate you can also say, maybe.
- TOMO-CHOCO… tomo means friend. My name is TOMOharu, which means friend and spring or knowledge or sun or…man, Chinese character has such a countless meanings but, why we call CHINESE character? Chinese characters are different from the Chinese character we use. Anyway, TOMO choco is chocolate school girls or school girls minded girls in your office try to share with your friends. Such a sweet chocolate, huh?
- HONMEI-CHOCO… This is what we should call the real valentine chocolate!!! It’s the chocolate women try to give to the person she really loves! So, stupid boys or seniors always try to make fun of their sad GIRI-CHOCO as HONMEI-CHOCO. To the men, the number you get this chocolate sometimes means your value as a humankind.
Hahaha…So unique custom right? Anyway, if you know these types chocolate, you can somehow understand the Japanese Valentines chocolate custom.
However…. It seems that there comes a NEW TYPE of chocolate. Can you believe that? Why Japanese people try to make it more complicated even it is too complicated. It looks like the Japanese toilet shares this culture.
The one I heard 2021 is this.
4. AWAYOKUBA-CHOCO…Awayokuba means “If there is a chance”. So, this chocolate is more than GIRI-CHOCO but less than HONMEI-CHOCO. Are’t you GENIUS???!!! So, if there is a man you love but hesitate to give him HONMEI, you can give this one. Why hadn’t we noticed? Are we stupid??? Thanks to this new type, girls can live much easier.
These are the brief summary of Japanese Valentine culture. I can talk about much more, but this is just a personal blog, so I’m sorry (Saying I’m sorry to much is another Japanese custom. We use it as Hello♪ALOHA♪, no I’m serious). Hope you have a Happy Valentine’s Day!
Should we stop every fun thing?
Long long time no see everyone. I was really busy for reading books and writing Japanese fiction (it’s true) these days. Anyway, since the state of emergency was declared in some populated prefectures in Japan, the atmosphere in Japan is a bit heavier than before. The first declaration of a state of emergency was for all Japan, but some prefectures are not an area for this declaration. However, since we are Japanese, we love to sympathize or reading somebody’s way of feeling. Japan is the nation of peer pressure.
So, many people seems that they give up some fun stuff really easily even your area is not under the state of emergency. Of course, preventing the pandemic, and do our best for not getting infected must be really important, and we still have to make efforts for this even this whole year. But, still, I believe we still have rights to have fun with something.
For example, trip to near tourist sites. We should avoid crowd area though, it would also be a good thing to go and help the economy of tourist sites. Many companies are becoming bankrupt. This is really hard time to think about whether going out or not. But, easy “STAY HOME” is really bad for our health especially on our mind. The scenery would be very monochrome or tasteless.
We should prevent the spread of COVID-19, but we should not give up any fun things that easily. I hope people can live decently with COVID pandemic soon.
Heavy Snowfall
I live in a country part of Hokkaido, and from yesternight we are getting heavy snowfall for now. There were less snow compared to these years but the time of balance out anyway comes at some point. The point was simply yesterday and today. Such day, I suddenly woke up with a sound of snow plow truck. Hearing it in the borderland of dream and real, I feel like there comes certain amount of snow finally.
The merit of a heavy snowfall is that you can enjoy ski at a ski resort that was in trouble due to the lack of snow. And if you have too much snow and cause a traffic trouble, maybe the school would be canceled (I felt so happy about it when I was a student). The de-merit of it is just you need to clear the snow away with your spade. It is some work.
Have you noticed that the picture above of my car seems a bit strange? There is an orange on the car. It’s a joke for a Japanese traditional culture. In Japan, almost everyone put “kagamimochi” in your house or office (not these days?). It is cute.
Kagami mochi (鏡餅, “mirror rice cake”), is a traditional Japanese New Year decoration. It usually consists of two round mochi (rice cakes), the smaller placed atop the larger, and a daidai (a Japanese bitter orange) with an attached leaf on top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagami_mochi
When You Read Too Much
So, now is the time of winter vacation to me, and that simply means I have a lot of time to read books. This is one of the best imaginable luxury; spending all the time for reading books. However, some people have already mentioned, book has a negative side effect as there are no vaccine that never cause any side effect (Anyway, the both are artificial). For example, reading too much makes your character a bit depressive and actually, you get depressed or rather makes you physically and psychologically indoor person.
Why if you work out too much and you don’t get depressed but reading too much? This question seems a bit deep to me. To keep the balance, you have to workout before you hurt your back due to too much reading on the sofa. I should workout. Since the world is much colder these days (I live in one of the coldest prefecture in Japan), I totally don’t feel like jogging outside. There are no kendo practice during this new year holidays. Excuse and excuse. I know, I know. I know I just do the push ups right away, but I am too lazy to put a book aside and do this. But, today…
A New Year’s “Jealousy”
So, I am currently spending my winter vacation from December 26th to January 17th. Being a high school teacher in Japan is said to be really busy (especially junior high teachers. They are said to be the busiest around the world). However, the beauty of being a teacher is that you have certain amount of paid vacation term in summer and winter season. Still somebody can complain that Japanese teachers are busy. Maybe it depends on which school you are working at.
The long time no see amount of time makes people think of many bullshit things that never attracts you to think of before or after the vacation. Since you have plenty of time and power to think about tiny things, you can really think or getting depressed or angry easily compared to the usual work days. However, I became 28 and I have been feeling like I’m dealing with it these years. Then, I found a twitter account.
I know people’s taste or understanding is completely different and I have no idea what you would think about the twitter account. But to me, When I encountered this account, I was made into really happy and frustrated and jealous about the account because the view of the world of this twitter is almost, very almost the same to my imaginary ideal twitter account!
His every picture or tweet on the page seems almost perfect. Every single post or picture desperately tells me those tweets or pictures are created with deep thoughts and delicate technique of sense. Actually, the first time I accidentally found this account was almost a year ago. I was surprised that the quality of the account and I thought that the person who can do this is a college student, and he was younger than my age. Then, I felt a slight feeling of jealous at that time, so I had never seen from that time.
However, about 2 or 3 days before today, I accidentally found him on the twitter again. Then I found the pinned tweet.
In short, it says that his first novel will be published on January 20th, 2021, then I got huge goosebumps. OMG. This LEMON man has become a real writer. I thought he was a kind of young person who has a really good taste. But now, he became a real writer. I thought like, I tried to cerebrate him but to be honest, I was totally knocked down. I know the pictures or tweets are somehow directed by his effort, but still, he is too great.
The feeling of me was actually very mixed. A happy sad. Celebration and jealous. The reaction of one of my friend on the phone was “You must be really bored”.
New Year’s Resolutions?
So, it is 2021. 2020 was an interesting year. I could start learning how to play the guitar and broke up with my ex-girlfriend. So, what? 2020 is gone. This coming 2021 sounds very futuristic to me. Maybe we are living the future world. Seeing boring TV programs through this new year holidays, I felt like I watched enough TV as I should watch in this year. Then I realized the 2050 people would think this electric car TV-ad as very uncool. Anyway, future must be cooler. I have no motivation and feel much meaning to write about this new year’s resolutions, but let me try, even the world would experience more harsh situation.
- Be yourself
- Don’t be a pretender (of someone cool)
- Do what I should do
Simple, right? Too much detailed plans can kill you. The best way to achieve your plan is not to make a plan. However, the abstract plans seems to work this year. I have been feeling that I was pretending someone cool. But I have gradually realized that the person who try to be cool is not cool. The person who is not cool is really cool. I want to accept my craziness this year. I will not deny my honest desires. I will do what I really should do and want to do. I will brush up myself and be the best man I can be.
Happy Lazy New Year from Japan
Happy new year for all the readers around the world. Keep journaling everyday is very challenging but it would definitely have some deep meaning. Last year was the weirdest year in my life and I have no idea what will happen this year. Anyway, time never stops. As long as we live, we should aim the bright side of anything. Hope I can write everyday this year, and make some people around the world feel good.
