Today is a sad day. Just a little while ago (at approximately 12 noon) a plane lifted off that is holding two people of interest. One, a Connecticutian, and the other, a Mie-ite, are on their way to America. Since the Mie-ite, a female, has never been to the land of freedom and cheeseburgers they, as a couple, are testing out the waters in Connecticut. It would be nice if they come back to us, but I hope that they’ll have good luck in the USA.
Starting in July, pretty much every city in Japan has a fireworks event. These events usually fall on the weekends, but you get the occasional weekday festival. Of course, this being Japan and all, there’s an extremely deep meaning for each city’s display. It might take me a while, but I’m going to go explain the meaning of some of Japan’s most popular firework displays.
For those of you that somehow don’t know this, Japan has a socialized health care system. I have just learned this (thanks to not paying any attention) and now I’m desperately trying to make it out of the country before they murder me and use my bone marrow to power futuristic raccoon dogs with robot skeletons. Please continue reading what I have wrote from a dark corner while hugging both my dog and my computer.
Next week in Japan is Tanabata (七夕、たなばた). If you want a short explaination in english into the background of the day then click here (horrible pronunciation included!). Otherwise, you could watch a picture show from somewhere up in Sendai. Whether you watched a video or not, what you should know is that Japanese people write wishes and hang them on a bamboo tree in hopes that they will be granted.
It’s time for plums to rain from the sky. Well, it would be if you decided to use a crappy internet site to translate Japanese. 梅雨 (tsuyu, plum rain) is the rainy season in Japan. In Kansai it generally starts around nowish and lasts for around a month.
When someone says that it’s the rainy season, people might imagine something similar to a monsoon. You must realize that these images are planted in your head by malevolent forces and you must resist them as much as possible; if you don’t do this you will never realize the true power what people are trying to convey when they tell you about the Japanese rainy season. Read the rest of this entry »
Most likely few, if any, of you heard about this (especially considering that North American news always forgets that there are other countries), but it’s … slightly big news over here; we have just lost our PM, Yukio Hatoyama. Earlier today he was assassinatedresigned because of his handling of the Futenma (普天間) relocation. I’m going to have to explain this in more detail, aren’t I?
