How many paper bags do you keep in your room?
Do you separate them as 1) good one and 2) bad one?
The other day, one of my friends found that I used a little navy Bulgari paper bag to put all my medicine, and she screamed that I was so stupid. She also "advised" me that such a "good bag" may wanna be used when attending some fancy occasions, she said, "Well Hiro, you don't wanna smash such a good bag..., I mean at least, in Japan"
Okay, I agree that little Bulgari one may be rare for me, because I don't go there that often, plus, that bag wasn't the one I've got from my shopping anyway. I once stopped by the store and got some brochure or something. I mean, free paper bag from Bulgari.
But, here in Japan, paper bags are no longer just a shop's ad bags.
We use them as fashionable sub bags. And therefore, we do have to choose the coolest one matched with our outfits of the day.
I attended one of my friends' wedding reception the other day, and noticed that all girls did carry paper bags. Somehow smart idea, tho, coz, normally party dresses don't look good with a big tote bag or a a briefcase. We can only carry small purses, yet, need to bring our makeup stuffs, cameras, and cell phone etc. And so, paper bags work perfectly.
When looking around girls at the reception, tho, I found that they all carried brand paper bags, like, paper bags from Gucci, Bulgari or Hermes. Hunting World seemed to be popular that day, too. Yeah, my friend advice was right.
Yeah I understand that supermarket one doesn't match, but I also wondered why we cannot just go to convenience stores or stationary shops to buy "just a paper bag" with no name on it.
I mean, I know, and guess you all know why we wanna carry an orange Hermes paper bag, navy Bulgari one or red Cartier one in public. This is the statement to the world of: "Hey, I often go shopping at this shop so I have a plenty of extra paper bags to use as a sub bag" ...., right?
I still feel awkward to follow the path, but, I guess I have to return Bulgari to get another brochure :)
Monday, June 30, 2008
Safe and scary Japan
I still cannot figure out what exactly is going on here.
Japan is safe. Sure it's so safe. You can leave your umbrella at the convenience store entrance while you shop around. And you can park your bicycle in front of your train station for a day only with the little front wheel lock (actually, there's no bike holder on the street anyway). You may wanna carry your purse around but still it's safe to leave your food at the McDonald's table when you wanna use the bathroom. Yeah, you don't have to worry about someone will bring away your stuff. SAFE, isn't it?
At the same time, tho, normal people can easily turn into criminal offenders. TV news everyday reported murder cases, but, those were not occurred at the yeah-seems-to-be-definitely-unsafe kind of site. Those crimes occur at the upper middle class neighborhood. And most criminals we can see on TV news aren't any gangsters or any of those who needed to commit crimes under the life thread circumstances.
For example, one day, I've seen the news of son killing his father, then grandmother killing her daughter-in-low, and a guy killing his neighbor. What a heck. Those suspects may have gone to school, supermarket or work the day before their actions, and suddenly decided to kill someone just because they were frustrated. Scary.
I can only come up with one idea of the possible background of those crimes, tho. Japanese people are always submissive, are patient or are not supposed to say something aloud. They've probably had nothing to release what they have in their mind for a long time and suddenly they are snapped. Being submissive is supposed to be one of our beauties, but, nowadays, the idea of our culture is being misunderstood, I guess.
In Japan, another beauty is that we are supposed to sense what others' are thinking or what others want without them saying anything. But I really think this idea is the reason that takes people to the wrong way.
Say what you want, when you want, yet, nicely.
Japan is safe. Sure it's so safe. You can leave your umbrella at the convenience store entrance while you shop around. And you can park your bicycle in front of your train station for a day only with the little front wheel lock (actually, there's no bike holder on the street anyway). You may wanna carry your purse around but still it's safe to leave your food at the McDonald's table when you wanna use the bathroom. Yeah, you don't have to worry about someone will bring away your stuff. SAFE, isn't it?
At the same time, tho, normal people can easily turn into criminal offenders. TV news everyday reported murder cases, but, those were not occurred at the yeah-seems-to-be-definitely-unsafe kind of site. Those crimes occur at the upper middle class neighborhood. And most criminals we can see on TV news aren't any gangsters or any of those who needed to commit crimes under the life thread circumstances.
For example, one day, I've seen the news of son killing his father, then grandmother killing her daughter-in-low, and a guy killing his neighbor. What a heck. Those suspects may have gone to school, supermarket or work the day before their actions, and suddenly decided to kill someone just because they were frustrated. Scary.
I can only come up with one idea of the possible background of those crimes, tho. Japanese people are always submissive, are patient or are not supposed to say something aloud. They've probably had nothing to release what they have in their mind for a long time and suddenly they are snapped. Being submissive is supposed to be one of our beauties, but, nowadays, the idea of our culture is being misunderstood, I guess.
In Japan, another beauty is that we are supposed to sense what others' are thinking or what others want without them saying anything. But I really think this idea is the reason that takes people to the wrong way.
Say what you want, when you want, yet, nicely.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Fear of insecurity
Hey guys, Japan is being more and more sick lately. It's been six months since I moved back to Japan, and I could clearly see something has totally changed, or I could say something has gone worse in my country.
I guess some of you guys have heard about the recent incident in Akihabara, aka, electric town.
In case for those who doesn't know, what happened is: one guy killed seven innocent pedestrians randomly last Sunday at this neighborhood. He rented a truck, came to the area and drove through the pedestrian-only street to hit people. And worse, he swung around a knife on the street and ended up killing such a lot of people. Crazy.
Now this guy was arrested and many TV programs including gossipy ones now started talking about him.
According to those news, the trigger of his motivation was that "He was pissed because his uniform wasn't in his locker room." The suspect was a temp stuff, and one day, he found his company uniform wasn't where it's supposed to be. He thought it was intentional and was a message of being fired. And he snapped, and then, killed people. Darn, what a heck is going on with this country? Is killing such an easy thing?
And here comes more. This is not the only crazy news I saw on TV lately.
This news reminded me of another one, not the murder news, though, : One TV broadcaster committed suicide in her car.
This one may not have reported internationally. One freelance TV reporter, whom everyone thinks she's cute, intelligent and successful, was found dead in her car. Obvious suicide case. She had her blog and she kept writing about her anxiety of her work, future and her life itself.
Suddenly several rumors came up on this news, such as; this girl didn't have a boyfriend or had a bad relationship with her ex, or more. But everybody could see she could have made enough money, she had an above average looks. If the rumor was close enough to her motivation of suicide, what the heck was she thinking? Her life was at least "seemed to be more glamourous" than ordinal people's one.
These two news may not be seen to have any similarity. But to me, both cases seemed to be triggered by their insecurity. And I was surprised of the power and fear of insecurity. Gee, people can do anything when being insecure and when the situation lasts long.
I can say compare to, say, American people, Japanese are a bit more sensitive in terms of the condition of "being out of the rail." So I guess we can be insecure more easily than others. As you know, we prefer being the same with others. We prefer not being stood out. Otherwise people around you start saying something wrong about you. So once you have the possibility of you being out of the loop, it would be so scary.
Hope people will be a bit more torelable of being different from others. And hope people won't gossip too much about others without knowing much about them.
Darn, hope I won't see such kind of news any more.
I guess some of you guys have heard about the recent incident in Akihabara, aka, electric town.
In case for those who doesn't know, what happened is: one guy killed seven innocent pedestrians randomly last Sunday at this neighborhood. He rented a truck, came to the area and drove through the pedestrian-only street to hit people. And worse, he swung around a knife on the street and ended up killing such a lot of people. Crazy.
Now this guy was arrested and many TV programs including gossipy ones now started talking about him.
According to those news, the trigger of his motivation was that "He was pissed because his uniform wasn't in his locker room." The suspect was a temp stuff, and one day, he found his company uniform wasn't where it's supposed to be. He thought it was intentional and was a message of being fired. And he snapped, and then, killed people. Darn, what a heck is going on with this country? Is killing such an easy thing?
And here comes more. This is not the only crazy news I saw on TV lately.
This news reminded me of another one, not the murder news, though, : One TV broadcaster committed suicide in her car.
This one may not have reported internationally. One freelance TV reporter, whom everyone thinks she's cute, intelligent and successful, was found dead in her car. Obvious suicide case. She had her blog and she kept writing about her anxiety of her work, future and her life itself.
Suddenly several rumors came up on this news, such as; this girl didn't have a boyfriend or had a bad relationship with her ex, or more. But everybody could see she could have made enough money, she had an above average looks. If the rumor was close enough to her motivation of suicide, what the heck was she thinking? Her life was at least "seemed to be more glamourous" than ordinal people's one.
These two news may not be seen to have any similarity. But to me, both cases seemed to be triggered by their insecurity. And I was surprised of the power and fear of insecurity. Gee, people can do anything when being insecure and when the situation lasts long.
I can say compare to, say, American people, Japanese are a bit more sensitive in terms of the condition of "being out of the rail." So I guess we can be insecure more easily than others. As you know, we prefer being the same with others. We prefer not being stood out. Otherwise people around you start saying something wrong about you. So once you have the possibility of you being out of the loop, it would be so scary.
Hope people will be a bit more torelable of being different from others. And hope people won't gossip too much about others without knowing much about them.
Darn, hope I won't see such kind of news any more.
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