March 10th, 1998
March 10th, 1998
Today is a significant day for several reasons.
(Skip this! Take me to the update!)
First of all, today is known as White Day in Japan.
*takes out laser pointer and overhead transparencies*
You see, boys and girls, in Japan Valentine's day is known as "The One Day in the Year when Girls may Express their Feelings [of love... feelings of hate, dislike, digust and ambivalence are for every day] towards the Boys in their Lives, usually using Love Letters and Hand- made Chocolates". This patently ridiculous and rather sexist view of Valentine's Day has permutated to the point where adult women are expected to give "giri-choco" [lit. "Chocolate of Obligation"] to their social superiors and any guys they know and are obligated to acknowledge as males. This is beginning to change: in an effort to reclaim the male dollar, Japanese card and flower manufacturers have started playing up the roots of Valentine's Day and are encouraging men to similarly spend money... er, express their love using flowers and cards. (Chocolate is still considered a for-guys-from-girls thing.)
However, before this enlightenment began, the Evil Forces of Capitalism caused the creation of White Day, on March 14th (a month after Valentine' s Day). Since on Valentine's Day, the girls are practically required to make one-way declarations of love (eg. "I like/love you" or "Please consider going out with me"), on White Day guys are expected to do the same ("I like you. Please go out with me") or at the very least, are expected to make a response to the girl ("Yes, I'll go out with you" or "No thanks!". Many a bitter young girl has written a letter to the Japanese equivalent of Seventeen Magazine about the latter type of boy). Their arsenal is, apparently, candies (these also exist in the giri-form), white chocolate and, apparently, underwear (this I only read of in a manga for twenty-somethings, so it may have rather confused the purpose of White Day).
Another reason that today is significant is that I finally got to write the entries from Thursday to today. Like I said, I've been busy. And I will continue to be busy. Darn research essays... I have to find 5 recent articles and 3 books pertaining to some essay topic I haven't even chosen yet... grrrrr...
*back on topic*
Anyhow, Keiko was paused from 8:40 am to 9:50 pm (12 h 10). During her 10 minutes of life, she ate once and was played with once. Also Blueberry I (my last remaining Technosphere carnivore) let me know that it had "fathered" Greeny The 5 I.
Finally, today is significant because my parents took us on a cross-border trip to Washington,
where we visited some Daffodil/Tulip gardens as well as some shopping centers.
:)
We checked out an adorable! store/teddy bear design studio (the latter part interested me the most, since I make teddies and penguins and the odd bunny as a hobby. Er, that is, make STUFFED ANIMALS of them. I haven't been able to for a year now, due to my @#$% studies). It was called Bunnies By the Bay, and among other things had some samples of delicious spreads and white chocolate hot cocoa mix (keep in mind, it was 1:00 pm and I hadn't had lunch yet... aesthetics were not on my mind). We later meandered to Cascade Mall and an Outlet center.
At the mall I visited Kay Bee toys, which had TamAngels on sale for 17 dollars (which made me feel pretty good... I guess my tamangel wasn't such a rip-off after all!) as well as regular tams for 9.99. They also had the Rug Rats and Looney Tunes GigaPets Plus, and the R2D2 gigapet (I considered getting it, but had no US dollars, nor courage to beg some from my parents).
At the Outlet Center, I found the penguin version of another collectible stuffed critter series. I already got a Waddles the Beany Baby Penguin for Christmas, so I am referring to the Puffkins collections' penguin, Tux!!! Unfortunately little Tux turned out to be pricey (about 6 bucks, american... which is close to 9 bucks canadian... which is more than I have in my wallet right now) and not-as-cute-as-a-real-penguin (his beak was off-center and I didn't quite like his eyes). It is now my life-quest to either badger someone into buying it for next Christmas, or make a cuter rip-off version on my own.
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Most of these Images stolen from Someone's Osuchi/Mesuchi Diary as well as Niku-kyuu's Home Page. Thanks for your generosity!
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