Placebos

Two weeks ago, I gave a blood-pressure gauge to my parents and a couple of days ago, my mother came to my place to express her thanks. She said to me, “Thanks to the device, my blood pressure has surely been decreasing. I’ve been using it more than three times a day.” I immediately replied, ”Oh no! That isn’t a machine for reducing your blood pressure.” She frowned and said, “I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what you are saying…
but that's true…

The next day, I told this episode to the drugstore owner who sold the blood-pressure gauge to me. He said, “Hmmm, that’s interesting. It reminds me of the so-called bathroom scale effect. Well, just stepping on a bathroom scale everyday can have a positive effect on the weight loss of someone. This is called the placebo effect.”



Many medical products and supplements seem to rely heavily on the placebo effect. Consumers consider the quality, reputation, and advertising of these products as important factors in their purchasing decisions. In general, it can be said that our mind-sets and personal situations have a strong influence on our health.


Things are not so simple, however. In fact we can’t expect too much from the placebo effect. For instance, in the past, Chinese soaps and substances derived from special seaweeds sold like hotcakes in Japan because many people believed that these things made them slender. Actually, people began to feel fed up and frustrated with these products. As a result, the Chinese soap boom faded away before long; apparently the soap in itself had no effect on a person’s ability to slim down.



Our perceptions and senses can be swayed by our own psychological conditions. An experiment demonstrated the fact that two samples of the same water can be perceived differently by a person under certain circumstances. Water in a bottle with “bless you” written on it was perceived to be sweeter than the same water in a bottle with nothing written on it.




It seems to me that we don’t always need scientific truths. In other words, truths can deceive us in various ways. There is a Japanese saying which goes, “believers will be saved.”


Here is the Amadeus effect: Mozart’s compositions make you smarter. It is often said that examinees must listen to Mozart before taking tests. The frequency of his musical works is believed to stimulate our brains to operate at optimum efficiency. Do you believe this? Surely your answer must be YES!

Spring of Trivia

There are public toilets in a city in Australia, which open automatically within 10 minutes. According to a municipal agent of the city, those toilets could deter crimes like drug abuse, kidnapping, rape, etc. Maybe they could do that to some extent but...

How about this one? A Sphinx in Egypt is looking at a signboard of Kentucky fried Chicken! How nice this combination of ancient times, modern times, cultural heritage, and fast food is!

This information was provided by a popular Japanese TV program "Spring of Trivia". I can learn useless, trivial and funny knowledge from this program. I love it! We Japanese say "Heee" when we are surprised to learn interesting things. So, commentators in this program evaluate trivial knowledge submitted by viewers by awarding "Heee points" according to how unique, funny, cute and interesting this trivial knowledge is.
One day, the MC said that the English word, “NEWS" originated from the words North, East, West and South. As you can see, "NEWS" consists of the capital letters of the each word. And news covers all the directions in the world.



Afterwards, the MC smirked and said, "Don't you believe it? Oh, I'm sorry. it's not true, Actually, "NEWS" originally came from the plural of NEW. Indeed, he confidently declared, "Now that we know the facts, let's dump this fake information! We strongly encourage you to submit confusing information to us in order to promote the worldwide eradication of this information!"

Do you have any trivial knowledge or confusing information? Don't you want "Heee" points? Actually, those points are completely useless however.

waka on Kagamiyama mountain in Karatsu

waka, originally uploaded by furyu_man18.

The Waka inscribed in this monument says “How sad she was...no matter how many times she waved her sleeve, she couldn’t stop the departure of the vessel." -- By Yamonoueno Okura. ;The woman is Sayohime.Her husband boarding the vessel as a warrior is leaving for a　country for war. She keeps seeing her husband off waving her sleeve even after the ship disappeared.

This waka is included in Manyoushu.
Manyosyu is the oldest anthology of Waka in Japan’s history. It was compiled around the 7th and 8th centuries. It consists of 20 scrolls, including more than 4,500 short poems written by the imperial family, aristocrats, a lower class of anonymous warriors called Sakimori that were dispatched to Kyushu, and commoners

Saga International Baloon Festa '2006

Saga International Balloon Festa takes place in Saga city　for 1week over the November　3th. At this festival, some international competitions for flying balloons are carried out.




In saga the November sky is clear and cosmos flowers are in full bloom.
Saga has large rice fields which are really suite for Balloons.　The period is the season of rice harvest. If you have adequate time/days you can see traditional harvest festivals in saga during this season.




Time: There are two time tables on each day.　
Part of the early evening around 7 AM and part of after noon around 3pm.
As Traffic congestions are surely expected, using public transport such shuttle buses near center of saga city or JR trains (Drop at Nabesima station) is much better that driving to this cite.



Location, Banks along Kase rive is the place where balloons launch.There is an event holding light-up demonstration of colorful balloons in the evening.That’s an amazingly spectacle view.



http://www.sibf.jp/english/

Toriou Festival

This festival took place on Dec 3th '06 at Kannonbaru-Hachiman shrine in Imari city.

Only men in the community holding leaves of mulberry in their mouths make 833 rice balls made of newly produced rice. The two groups of men, representing the two sides involved in the civil war that took place in the Nanbokucho era, are fighting over the cage containing all the rice balls. While seniors are striking the stage with lit torches, youngsters on the stage are shouting without fear.



At the end of the festival, the youngsters provided people with the rice balls which are believed lucky charms preventing ones from any diseases. Actually I got and ate one. Here in Japan, many fire festivals take place from December to January. Exposing to ashes, smokes from the fire at shrine is also believed to purify people. I exposed a lot of them indeed at this festival!!

Onja Onja

“Onja Onja” is held at 8:00pm on January 7th.The day marks the end of the New Years’ celebration time period called “Matsunouchi”, a traditional Japanese term. The festival has taken place since the Edo era. A large torch with a length of just over 10m is burnt with decorations for the New Years celebration such as “Kadomatsu” (like a bamboo gate) and “Shimenawa” (a decoration of straw rope, etc).




It is really exciting to see how the big torch is stood up vertically in the fire by community firefighters. People surrounding the fire make a wish for their safety throughout the year. It is believed that being exposed to smoke and ashes from fire prevents bad things from happening and brings good fortune and economic prosperity to people. It is also believed that the fire of these festivals purifies everything. Fire festivals are held during the New Year’s celebration time in Japan.