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WotD: Mad dash
I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that’s over.
The holiday season is supposed to be a time of peace, love and happiness, but each year it ends up being a mad dash to the end.
Why, oh why, is there nothing relaxing about Christmas and New Year’s, and why do we lie to ourselves every year, telling ourselves that this year will be different?
It doesn’t matter if you’re Canadian or Japanese.
The holidays are a mad dash to the grocery store, gift shopping, the train station or the airport.
If you are wondering, a mad dash is a wild and uncontrolled rush.
When I was a kid, I remember watching news reports of American Black Friday sales on Canadian TV just after American Thanksgiving.
People would line up at the store entrance, and then when the doors opened, they’d make a mad dash to get a TV or the must-have toy of the year.
My father always said Americans were nuts.
Then I came to Japan and thought it would be different.
It wasn’t.
Japan has Fukubukuro or happy bags.
There’s a mad dash for them, just like for Black Friday sales in the US, except the Fukubukuro mad dash happens in the new year.
Stores fill up bags with things they couldn’t sell during the year and sell each bag full of goods at a bargain.
Japanese line up in front of stores and, just like the Americans, make a mad dash into the store when the doors open.
Children are run over, older women pushed aside, and husbands run for their lives because if they can’t get the right bag, their wives will be angry.
Who knew shopping in Japan was a contact sport?
As I said, I’m glad that’s over.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 78.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.