😂
One thing I have learnt in my stay in Japan is that, what you see on the package is exactly what you get inside.
Sometimes it’s exaggerated to say the same size of potatoes chips on the package is the same size as what is inside of it.
No one offers you anything to taste.
In America they hand you a tiny spoon and let you taste the ice cream for free, as many as you want, before you buy anything.
A teenager named Colton held one out to me.
"You can try 'em all."
I said, "How many may I try?"
"Like, all of 'em."
In Japan you look at the photograph, you choose, and you live with your choice. Nobody hands you a spoon, because choosing correctly is your job.
He had made an offer. To refuse an offer is to insult the man who made it. To accept two is to insult the other twenty-nine. There was exactly one honorable path and it ran through the entire case.
I started at the left.
Colton handed me spoons. Somewhere around the eleventh he stopped being confused and started being invested. By the nineteenth he was scouting ahead of me.
"Okay, this next one's got a swirl."
Then he gave me water. Unprompted. To cleanse. We were nineteen deep and this had become a joint operation with a chain of command.
Thirty-one flavors. Thirty-one spoons. A line formed behind me and not one person complained, and I know that because I was listening for it with my entire body.
Colton set down the scoop.
"So what are we thinking?"
We.
I ordered vanilla.
The line did not laugh. Colton did not laugh. He nodded slowly, like a man whose suspicion had finally been confirmed, and gave me four words.
"Yeah. That's the move."
Then he put two scoops on it and charged me for one.
This is synonymous to saying “Bismillah” and Gochisosama deshita after eating is synonymous to saying “Alhamdulillah”.
It is one eating culture amongst others I admire with the Japanese as a foreigner living here.
Before every meal, Japanese people press their hands together
and say one word.
"Itadakimasu."
Tourists think it means "bon appétit."
It doesn't.
It literally means: "I humbly receive."
Receive what? A life.
The fish gave its life. The rice plant gave its seeds.
The farmer gave his summer. The cook gave her morning.
The word thanks all of them at once —
including the food itself.
Children say it in unison before school lunch, every day.
A salaryman says it quietly, alone, over a convenience store bento
at midnight, hands pressed together for half a second.
Nobody's watching. He says it anyway.
It's not a prayer. It's not religion.
There's no god involved, no reward, no punishment.
It's just this:
the meal in front of you used to be alive,
and someone worked so it could reach you,
and pretending otherwise would make you smaller.
Two seconds of gratitude, three times a day,
125 million people, for centuries.
Try it at your next meal. One quiet moment before you eat.
See if the food tastes different.
It shouldn't. But it will.
Now these 88 Buddhist temples in the shikoku island has been harmonized in the Daisho-in at Miyajima to ease pilgrims performing their pilgrimage.
In the Daisho-in bears the Kanon do (hall of mercy) which is exactly 1220 years old.
There is an island in Japan where strangers
will hand you food, cold drinks, even money,
and walk away before you can properly thank them.
It's called Shikoku. And this has been happening
for hundreds of years.
The island hosts one of the world's great pilgrimages:
1,200 kilometers, 88 temples, 30 to 60 days on foot.
Pilgrims have walked this circle since long before America existed.
And for just as long, the people who live along the path
have practiced something called "osettai":
An old woman flags you down to press oranges into your hands.
A farmer leaves a bench and a kettle of tea by the road.
Families have run free lodging houses for generations.
Rules of the road: a pilgrim must not refuse.
Because osettai is not charity.
The locals believe the pilgrim walks for all of them,
carrying their prayers to all 88 temples.
The gift is how a farmer who can never leave his fields
joins the journey.
Refusing his oranges means refusing
to carry his prayer.
So the tired pilgrim bows, accepts with both hands,
and walks on, a little heavier with fruit,
a little lighter in spirit.
There are countries where a stranger on your doorstep
is a threat to defend against.
And there is an island where, for centuries,
a dusty stranger walking past your gate
has been an opportunity:
the one chance today
to hand your hopes to someone
walking toward something holy.
Kindness, practiced daily for 400 years,
stops being kindness.
It becomes the culture itself.
Eid Mubarak in advance!
Before you roast that meat, take a closer look!
Some lesions = trim ✅
Others = throw it all away ❌
For expert advice, you can reach out to: Dr.
@ibrahimdauda46
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