Tag: life

What Beer and Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ) means to Japanese/ One of the best combinations Ever

Beer and Yakiniku make your day just perfect

Living and growing up in Japanese society for 28 years, my favorite food gradually has changed due to the changing of my life stages (french toast is a stable favorite food for me throughout life though). I don’t boost or want to be biased though, Japan is also famous for its unique diverse food culture. Japan is often criticized as a nation of peer pressure or lack of diversity. However, in terms of food or culture of cuisine, Japan is a nation of the great diversity of food culture, I think. Of course, you cannot have the real rural traditional Italian pasta in Tokyo, but it may have great quality for it, and it is really easy for the nation to access such high-quality cuisines at a cheaper price.

Every nation has a great food combination in its unique culture. At this time, I’d like to introduce you to one of the greatest food combinations (actually food and drink) in Japan. It’s sometimes described as a metaphor for a great combination. It is, Beer and Yakiniku. Beer is beer (My favorite, and the most well-known beer brand in Japan is Asahi’s SUPER DRY ). Yakiniku is a Japanese for BBQ, but Yakiniku can be enjoyed at a Yakiniku Restaurant with a small table and a kind of portable cooking stove.

Please imagine a day. It’s a very rough day. The work you dealt with the day was very heavy and your boss is just an asshole. You somehow struggle to survive and try to finish the day, and you did it. Then, looking at the clock, it shows 7 o’clock pm. You are very hungry. Your best colleagues suddenly hit upon a magical idea and tell the other ones “It was a rough day. Why don’t we go and celebrate our great work with beer and yakiniku, eh?” Then, the word can be imagined with a clear picture and the hint of the smell, and you wish to drink the cold beer with it as much as you can. Yakiniku and beer are very addictive. Meanwhile, you suddenly found that every familiar colleagues are surrounding at a table, and waiting for the coming of beer and yakiniku. Then, you do cheers and the happiest moment in your day would arrive.

This is what we Japanese reminds when we heard the word yakiniku and beer. Most of us cannot stop drooling a lot with these words. I had never thought that there would be a great combination more than BigMac and Coke when I was a teenager. Being an adult sometimes works.

Thank you very much for reading, and have a great day.

Eat well, Live well

I’m 28 years old and becoming 29 in the coming December. My birthday is December 23rd anyway. 27 years old still felt me as kind of a young man with the heart which seems pretty much the same to my high schooler’s mind. However, the situation suddenly seems to be changed from the age of 29. That sounds more like a nearly 30-year-old man, which defines me of “adult” age.

Somebody once said like this. In the 20s, men whom girls think as hot are males who look risky or unsafe. In the 30s, males who are interesting. In the 40s, who have fortune. That somehow made sense looking back to my 28 years of life. From now, I’m stepping into the next phase of my life, the 30s. I’m not sure what would be changed dramatically, or unchanged weirdly. Anyhow, I want to be a person who is at their best all the time.

To live a peaceful and healthy lifestyle, I’m taking care of my health condition no less than ever before. Try to eat healthier food (not bento which is sold at a convenience store containing a lot of chemical stuff), take supplements, and sleep well by turning off my smartphone after 8 or 9 o’clock pm. Personally, the most behavioral change that made me a great positive change was turning off the smartphone. Disconnecting from such addictive devices makes my mind clearer than before, and I think I can be a very decent man now. Eat well and live well, and hoping anything will be well.

The reason is sometimes not in mental

Do you often feel down? Or, always worry about tiny or big problem? Yesterday, I encountered a video clip on youtube, and the personality mentioned how to deal with our daily problems or worries. His solution was very unexpected one.

“Where is your heart (mind)?” Anyone have been thought about the question once in a life. Somebody would think it’s in our brain, and others would say it’s literarily in our heart or stomach. Now, I would like to say it’s the same thing to our body. We feel like we are thinking in our brain and our emotion is controlled by mainly brain. However, the reason why you get irritated easily today is just because your lack of iron, or skipping breakfast in the morning.

What the personality wanted to suggest is, we should firstly eat something decently before wondering our issues or worrying something. This is simply because we can’t worry correctly in a hunger or cold situation. We can’t think properly in such poor conditions. Therefore, we need to eat and make ourself warm first. That was the lesson the video wanted to say to us.

What do you think the advice? I personally really agreed with the idea. We sometimes misunderstand our mental health. The outside is getting colder, and maybe you would easily prone to get into trouble more often than before. We should count not only our mental health but also our body condition from now. Then, we can take care of ourselves more from now.

Efforts that you don’t feel as efforts

Do you have some things which requires a certain efforts for people but not for you. There are some things that you can use a kind of “the force” thing, for instance, like everyone struggles to write an essay, but somehow you can finish writing really quickly. It can be said as a talent, but today, I would call the ability more like “the force” in Star Wars movies.

Everyone seems to have a force for something. Of course we can’t make something fly or kill somebody softly with the power though, maybe there are something that can be called “the force” in this world. One of my kind of force is to write something, talking with fun to the very first meeting people, all compared to people I’ve met before.

Some people feel a thing that create huge stress, but you can even feel joy from the action. There are such things, and I want to keep brushing such my precious ability up for the entire life. The news of a Japanese scientist receiving Nobel Prize for Physics was buzzed in yesterday, and one of a media quoted his comments, which was like “I actually had no idea that my research object would be important research theme from the beginning, but I was very passionate about the research topic from more that 30 years ago (the system of climate changing)”.

Perhaps we should keep trying on something we can do without efforts. I mean, efforts we don’t feel them as the way average people feel. Then, we can enjoy the effort and we don’t have to regret in the future.

Somebody can push you

Time flies so fast. I’m feeling like my basic personality hasn’t been changed from high school days. Actually that doesn’t mean much to me. I mean, I feel like I’ve been always in trouble since my high school days. The core problem I’ve been thinking from my high school days was “Who The Hell Am I?” What is my future I should pursue or what would be the most suitable job to me. I don’t know what this disease is called. I’ve been looking for myself. What is my passion anyway, or like that.

To focus and try to solve the problem, actually it is not a good idea try to be alone in my case. One of the biggest reason why I broke up with my ex girlfriend was because she frequently talk about the marriage plan after being in a relation after 1 year and a half month. It is really usual thing to think about such thing for 27 or 28. But, something has not made sense in my mind, and I asked her to end the relationship. The excuse at that time for her was “because I have things to do before getting married”.

Now, more than a year has been passed since the breaking up. And then I hit upon an idea. The excuse was bullshit. Nothing I could achieve, and I couldn’t do anything great with all my alone time. Rather tried to hang out with friends and became more lazy guy, who don’t care future that much. Without “push”, I can’t do anything, then I realized.

And now, my life situation has been changed. My serious marriage plan is suddenly emerging before me. There is a woman who “push” me to think of and face my future seriously. Thanks to her, now I can feel very motivated and positive against the future. Now I’m feeling like I should drive it like you stole it.

Tomorrow

Since the emergency declaration has been just canceled the day before yesterday, the most of Japanese seems to feel a bit of freedom of Friday. Thanks to this pain relief, people can enjoy drink alcohol until not 8 pm but later than that time. That makes us to go grab a drink more often. See? We are not dogs anymore and we can live freely again.

One of my colleague asked me to go get drink, and we’ve just gone to a restaurant bar place for the first time in a month. We were almost forgetting how to drink and talk in such kind of place though, gradually we could make sense of how to behave in such place, and we could all share good drunk feeling. The beauty of alcohol can be described as this old saying: The truth is in the wine. Often, it is this kind of occasion that we can finally share the true feelings or stupidity.

Now, I came back to my house and typing this blog, and thinking about tomorrow’s schedule. Tomorrow, I’d like to go to a cinema and see the latest 007 movie “No Time To Die”, and want to write a fiction. I’ve been wondering when to write almost everyday, so tomorrow, I will definitely write my stuff. There are a lot of thing to do, really. Thanks to a convivial drinking party, now, tomorrow can be seen as clear as white wine to me.

You don’t know when you die

Sorry for this shocking title, but nobody would understand this meaning more than today’s us. The most important lesson leant from this pandemic was there were literally no proof that we can live tomorrow like yesterday. In short, we finally realize that we have no idea of when we will be dead or the world ends. I’m not supposed to make you scary but rather I want to see the bright side of this lesson today.

People often say and be told that you should do what you want to do. But, how many people can live like this? For instance, you want to have a piano in your tiny room, but you can’t buy it right now because you have not enough money to buy, and there is not enough room to put the piano. However, the COVID19 told us that even there are such a hard situation, you should buy and put it in your tiny room because you can be dead tomorrow. It sounds a bit extreme argument though, I recently really think like this way. Let’s do things that you’ve wanted to do right now! Then, you can lose your “perfect timing” forever. So, why don’t you start writing your fiction, or tell somebody love you, and somehow buy a cheap piano? There is always a way after all.

Personally, I think I need to work harder, and want to write a great novel, and practice the piano, and want to read tons of interesting books, and want to hang out with my precious friends, and want to say I love you from the bottom of my heart. Now I finally found that I have so so many thing to do in my life, in this short moments. I don’t want to spoil my precious time but actually if I try to tackle with all these things at once, I could easily get down. Therefore, the wisest way which seemed to me so now, is just keep trying everyday. It’s like accumulating a sheet of paper one by one everyday. But hopefully, someday I can see a beautiful scene standing on the papers.

What is Saturday to you?

It’s Saturday. Truly the happiest day through a week because you can never feel more freedom and possibility for the rest of your life on this day. Sunday is a bit tricky. It seems that you can do anything but the Monday comes right before you. That means, you feel like you need to prepare something for Monday, and sometimes you even find yourself worried to welcome Monday. How awful it is. Why am I so afraid of going to Monday? But, the most of people can understand what I’m feeling right now. I somehow like my job, my current situation, but, Sunday seems pretty dull.

Next to Saturday, my favorite day is Friday because you can do anything compared to the other days. However, we Japanese high school teachers have a tricky problem that is that we have a club activity on Saturday. I mean, I need to be a coach of a club activity from 8 am to 12 on the day. That is really tricky. Why I say it’s tricky because it sometimes felt really fun to be in a school office on Saturday morning till noon and enjoy activity with students, but, sometimes I suddenly feels like am I doing right? Am I losing a precious moment for my life? or like that.

Being a teacher itself is tricky now I think. If you really love talking or interacting with students, this job is super attractive for you guys, but like me who are not that good at staying with students for long time, I’m always wondering if I could do better to deal with or talk with adults than children. Do I really want to keep doing this job? Should I change a job after 1 or 2 year after making my homeroom students graduated? That kind of things are what I think of recently. And then, I find Saturday is somehow also a tricky day.

Imagination and Coins

Summer warm rain has fallen for several days in here. It is due to the approaching typhoon no. 9. Unlike to American hurricane, we don’t name it but we call it by numbers. There comes several typhoons and it gradually draws autumn.

The air changes dramatically day after a typhoon rain. We have to forget the summer dull hottest days suddenly, and then we realize the days was not gonna forever. Sometimes we recognized time as retrospective.

There is a famous sales copy for a publishing company’s ad for summer reading. It says, few hundreds yen and imagination.

想像力: imagination 数百円: few hundreds yen

I personally like this sales copy. It means, by imagination and few coins to buy a paperback , you can go everywhere. And now I also wonder, I can go everywhere if I could write my own story with cheap notebook and a pen by 300 yen ($3).

Summer vacation is a nice time to look back your history or verbalizing your hidden story. Let me try some tonight.

Let’s Talk About You

  1. What things do you love about your job?

High school teacher is the closest existence to the high schoolers, and the fact makes good influence to me. I can be energetic like teenagers, and we can share a kind of purest motivation. I’m 27 years old and that means there is at least 10 years gap between us. Sometimes their attitude break my heart in a bad way though, everyday seems dramatic. That is the best part of being a teacher I guess.

2. What things do you hate about your job?

Hmm. It’s a kind of my excuse though, the job needs too much output and I sometimes couldn’t find enough time to read or write. Japanese teachers are infamous for their crazy busyness. Maybe we should say thanks to this pandemic, the environment has gradually been changed in 2 to 3 months. Now everyone can see what is the necessary part of our job and what we can cut down. We should have more chill out time I think.

3. Why did you choose your job?

God only knows. Both of my parents are junior high teacher, and I have been influenced by their back since I was very young. The main talk over the dinner was always complaint about their stupid colleagues or problems with a student or their parents. Therefore I had never wanted to be a teacher until I went to an internship in my old school. That was dreamlike really fun time.

Thank you for reading.