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My Love Affair with Japan Continues

I love Japan. Some people can't quite comprehend how and why I have so much affinity for a country in which I have absolutely no roots, a country which committed widespread war crimes to my own land in the past. To this day, the Bad Boys of World War II aren't exactly wholly forgiven; unfortunately, the sins of their fathers have tainted the next generations. When I tell people how sad I felt when the family visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I don't get the empathy that I hope for. Granted that the Japanese did horrific things during the war, but that's the ugliness of war. Wars do things to people you can't imagine in normal life. Did they get what they deserved in the bombing of Hiroshima? Maybe. But did babies and young children deserve to be burned alive? You tell me. When you take relentless power struggle and greedy domination out of the picture, we were just human beings being savage and brutal to one another. And that just breaks my heart.

They never experienced the world as should have been their right.

Lost innocence


The aftermath and a grim reminder of atrocity committed against fellow human beings

Sadako Sasaki's valiant effort to fight her fate

 Anyway, back to the here and now. Like in previous sojourns, Japan keeps whispering to me after I came home. To keep me inspired until our next visit, I continue learning Nihongo on my own. I follow blogs, videos, and posts on social media about the Land of the Rising Sun. It is  almost serendipitous that I discovered this Netflix series called Kakegurui. I am not a television viewer but I occasionally browse Netflix on my computer to find things to watch while I knit. (Someone in my knitting group calls it Knitflixing, which is very appropriate.) Kakegurui is a Japanese manga which has an anime version very popular among fans of this genre. While I have never watched anime before, I find it surprising that I am very much taken with this live-action offering. It's really entertaining to watch and it's a good way to practice my listening skills as well. Anime-watching is arguably a predilection of the young and as a person in her 50s, I am so late to the party. But hey, I have never been orthodox and like I always say, it's better late than later. There are still so many hours, so many pages in my book to fill and I am grateful to be shown another door in this vast universe. In the meantime, I will continue following the exploits of Yumeko Jabami and her cohorts. 
 




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