Today was thrilling, well actually, no, no it wasn't. Not for the most part. I didn't run this morning, I saved it for this evening. I spent the full day at work, same old, same old. Some planning of my exciting long awaited return home.
(I warn you, I am going to be annoyingly secretive in this next sentence)
My day then picked up a bit after school and I headed to pick up a gift for someone special, something that I got made, it is brilliant, and beautiful and now I just wish Christmas would hurry up and come so i can give it to the person if is for. (See, lots of words but no real substance, you know nothing!)
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| Mystery box, mystery box, how exciting |
If you wanna know the secret, check back after christmas day.
Following my collection I came home and grabbed some food from the supermarket.
I have a question for you. It's Christmas, your friend comes over, you hand them a present you got them, maybe a bottle of wine or.... a bottle of some alcohol that isn't wine (As adults we know that a bottle of something alcoholic rarely goes down badly as a present). It's your turn, you have quite a large box. You are excited, you know it can't just be a boring bottle of wine, "people who give wine as presents are the worst" you think to yourself. You unwrap it and this is what you see:
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| At least it is in a nice box, I think you get a lid too! |
"What's that?" you ask. That is 15 cans of tuna, 5 varieties, 3 cans of each, all made by the same company. How would you feel about that?
What about if it was this?
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| Ohhh, different colour lids! But let's be honest, the gold lids are the best |
How's that? 6 different types of instant coffee, is that better?
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| The can top, second from the right really upsets me! |
There we go, that hit the spot, 27 cans of fruit juice. None of these items are particularly specialised, they are all items you could pick up from from the supermarket yourself if you so wished. Now, I don't want to insult any part of Japanese culture, but I find these as gifts rather unusual.
Being totally honest if someone bought me a present I could have easily picked up myself on my weekly shop I would feel a bit put out. I think many westerners would be (And you would make a note to ensure you bought that person some toilet cleaner or cans of beans next year. 2 can play at this game!). And this is something I have noticed about Japanese present culture. It is much more modest than in the west.
This links to what I have said before about the price of fruit in Japan. Fruit is a common gift, I have seen grapes, mangos and apples all packaged as gifts. It is not just food either, I had a teacher tell me once that the present she got from her son for her birthday was a mechanical pencil, that was it (I am not knocking mechanical pencils, they are the kings of pencils, as long as you have enough lead that is).
Something that flies in the face of my modest gift thing however is melons, yes thats right melons. This is how much I am used to paying for a galia melon, £2/$3/¥300. However, I have seen melons in Japan costing as much as £300/$500/¥50,000. There is something about the pattern on it's skin that Japan just loves and if the pattern is just right they are willing to pay unbelievable amounts of money for it.
All this being said, if i received this, I would be very happy:
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| For those who don't know, this is beer! Delicious, delicious beer |
After the supermarket I went home, marinated some chicken and went on a run. As my leg was still hurting I ran slower than I wanted to, but I still ran 6km instead of 5km, I had extra energy that wasn't being used up.
Something I have noticed is that even though I was running at a slow, I have hurt my leg pace I was running at about the same speed, if not a little faster than when I started all this.
After, I cooked the chicken. Soon I will soon be off to bed, it is much later than I intended to stay up to, especially as I have to get up for a morning run and I always find running in the morning after 2 days not running in the morning hard.
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| I didn't want to leave you with not ever seeing my chicken meal, I know that would just eat you up inside. Get it? Eat you up |
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