whiter skin, cucumber, flying tissue case

Curtis and I made nikujaga for dinner tonight. Because it was our first time making the dish a friend of mine met me at the supermarket to help me buy the ingredients. I’d been working in the garden after work so without changing clothes I drove down to the store to do some grocery shopping. When checking out the cashier looked at me in my white t-shirt and said, “Wow, you’re white. That’s great!”

It’s not every day that I get complemented on the whiteness of my skin, but nevertheless I thanked her for her kindness and told her that some Americans actually lay out in the sun just to get darker. She laughed at me and thought that trying to get darker on purpose was a foolish idea.

The cashier at the supermarket isn’t alone in favoring whiter skin. Actually, across Asia there is a booming cosmetic industry filled with products like lotions, creams, and serums all aimed at making the skin whiter. An article taken from CNN’s website titled Skin Deep: Dying to be White puts it like this:

Skin whitening has a long history in Asia, stemming back to ancient China and Japan, where the saying "one white covers up three ugliness" was passed through the generations. A white complexion was seen as noble and aristocratic, especially in Southeast Asia, where the sun was always out. Only those rich enough could afford to stay indoors, while peasants baked in the rice fields. [. . .] This obsession with whiteness has not faded over time.

Actually, I’ve accidentally bought whitening body soap in Japan so now when buying soaps and lotions I double check to make sure I’m not buying anything that will bleach my skin whiter than it already is.

Other news is that I accidentally killed one of my cucumbers. I think the rain storm and cold front which followed were too much for my little cucumber jr. to handle.

I told one of the office ladies about this today and she said that buying another cucumber plant wasn’t giving up and that it was totally acceptable. She even helped me at the store today and we picked out the strongest cucumber of the bunch – I’m sure things will be different this time. To make sure that cucumbers stay warm during the cold nights to come I made these:

My 5 year old neighbor Ryuto is a wild little boy and he loves the tissue case that Koko's mom gave me for Christmas. The other day he thought it would be fun if we throw the tissue case as high as we could into the sky and then take a picture. I thought it was a good idea too so we did. He was right, it was fun.