A New Year’s Resolution?

Don’t book a room without seeing it first:

Tokyo- Narrow, Narrow Home

明けましておめでとう (akemashite omedetou) everyone!  To those just starting to build their bento, to those continuing to do so, or to those who had no idea that they could build one.  For the third group, I’ve really got to start promoting such classics as pancake juice– pancake juice, for when asparagus juice becomes so 2012.

It’s a narrow world.  If you lived in Tokyo, one of the world’s first epicenters of urbanization (China seems to add a new one each day; on the plus side, if you play the word game geography, lots of cities starting with X to be found), you might think so.  In fact, 狭い世界 semai sekai (narrow world), is the way to say “it’s a small world” in Japanese.  The idiom of course has a different meaning, but if you lived in the claustrophobic example of housing seen above, crowded by countless apartment buildings and office towers (and detachable bachelor pods?), you’d quickly see why it’s called that.   I hope whoever lives there has a sliding pole installed, and keeps in mind that his/her mailbox is about a tenth the size of the net living area… be glad that it’s probably not your place.

Happy new year once again, with special mention to the residents of this dwelling, and here’s to the new year’s…series of new years’ (Khmer, Ethiopian, Chinese, Persian, and many, many more) to look forward to.

How did you celebrate?    Did you stay home, or join the vuvuzela-tooting revelers instead?