Things that concern me

In Japan many things concern me.

Today for example, I was in Family Mart or some such convenience store buying my breakfast onigiri (rice ball) and cold green tea, when I noticed the commercials that were playing (ie a video) on the front of the cash desk.

In this advert, a teenage schoolgirl was attempting the very tricky act of walking down some stairs whilst not skipping and she slipped and fell down a lot of steps landing on her back at the bottom. In typical Japanese fashion, the advert then showed lots of people staring at her, but nobody attempting to help, apart from one man who placed a book or a folder or something on her stomach.

Most bizarre. And pretty typical of the kind of thing you'd expect here.

A while back one of the teachers in our company was being as daring as to cycle on the road. Now, considering the average Japanese person that I see cannot walk or cycle in a straight line, my faith in motorists is somewhat, er, cautious, although I too sometimes cycle on the road. Not too often though (pavements are the way here). Anyway, said teacher was cycling when a lorry knocked him off his bike (badly breaking his arm, but that's not my point here). Another motorist stopped. Not to see if he was okay, but to tell him to hurry up and move.

Nice, huh?

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On another note, do you know 'Cinnamon', another Sanrio creation (the GODS who invented Hello Kitty)? Well, it's cold season here so many people are masked up and most face masks are a very boring white colour. In fact, it's unusual to see any that aren't white BUT one of my kids, an extremely cute six year old, came to the lesson yesterday in a Cinnamon mask, and wearing a co-ordinated Cinnamon top. Too cute. I may have to get one. I wonder if they do Kitty ones?

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And congratulations to Gabbie and Ben for little David Martin (good solid English name that!)

Maybe I'll send him a Cinnamon face mask for his first cold?!