It was my birthday and my parents sent me presents. The gifts from my mother were exactly the same necklace as the one she had sent me a couple of years ago, a vinyl bag which she apparently had got as a freebie, and some towels she didn’t use anymore. She also enclosed a bag of rice crackers. My hometown is in Kyoto that is a Japanese historic city with a lot of old temples and shrines. Many stores there take advantage of the location and use the historic sites and events as their signature design for wrapping. The store my mother bought rice crackers used a Japanese classic card game. It’s played with 100 cards on each of which an ancient poem is written. For some reason, I was very good at the game when I was a teenager. I haven’t played it for a long time. Some of the 100 poems were printed on the wrapping of the rice crackers and I remembered how good I was. The best present from my mother this year was a wrapper of a snack…
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Having fried #shrimps and fried cheese from a grocery store at home. #Japan
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#Eggplant with meat sushi, $1 for 2 pieces, at the conveyor belt #sushi restaurant. #Japan
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Went to see the #movie #AdAstra by buying a discount #matinee ticket at $13. I admire his father’s life more than his life back at home. #BradPitt #Japan
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I panicked completely
Whereas Japanese recent movies and dramas are intolerable, Japanese comedy performances are brilliant. There is an annual event for a short situation comedy performance on TV, which is a contest for both professional and amateur comedians. The winner takes one hundred thousand dollars. I look forward to the event every year. It’s broadcast live on TV but this year, I set the timer to record the program on my computer, as I was busy. My plan was to watch it later by laying food and snacks as an annual party.
About one hour into the three-hour event, I glanced at the computer casually during chores, and was horrified at the sight. The computer had shut down for no apparent reason. That meant it had stopped recording the show that I’d been waiting for a whole year. I panicked completely, turned on TV and rebooted the computer right away. I wasn’t sure how long I had missed the event, but watched it live from that point on anyway, because I took it as a sign not to put off something you really want. By missing the former part of the event, my excitement was half ruined with my planned party all ruined. After it was over, I watched the recorded part on my computer. Miraculously, the time that the computer was off was during a commercial break. It shut down right at the moment when one of the performances got to its punch line and the stage was blacked out. When I turned on TV and resumed recording, it was at the start of the next performance. I didn’t miss a thing. When I panicked, I shouted a lot of whys to my computer almost crying. It must have heard a cry of a soul and adjusted the timing by itself…