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Word of the Day: Whirlwind
I am not Japanese.
One way to know this is true is that I have never taken a whirlwind vacation.
First, we have to get the meaning of whirlwind out of the way.
Almost every year, you will see a whirlwind on the Japanese news.
A whirlwind can be two things.
First, a column of quickly spinning wind.
Second, A whirlwind event occurs extremely fast and is unexpected.
A school somewhere is holding a sports day when a column of quickly spinning wind will show up, throw some papers around, tip over a tent or two and peter out.
Sometimes, there are minor injuries, but often, there’s just a lot of excitement for a short period of time, and then everyone goes home.
This leads us to the way Japanese vacation.
Japanese take whirlwind vacations.
Usually, they don’t tell anyone they are taking a break.
Then they fly to Europe on a Thursday night, visit four countries in three days, then fly back on Sunday night so they can get back to work on Monday morning.
With all the travel, sometimes there are minor injuries, but often there’s just a lot of excitement for a short period of time, and then everyone goes home.
The purpose of a vacation is to relax.
Japanese don’t even give themselves enough time to suffer from jetlag.
The French and Germans know how to vacation.
It takes them two weeks before they get in the vacation mood, and then they begin to relax – for a month.
The only whirlwind they see is on the TV news if they experience one at all, and that’s only if they are vacationing in Japan during the summer.
A whirlwind event occurs extremely fast and is often unexpected.
If your Japanese neighbour disappears for a few days, don’t worry.
They are just taking a whirlwind vacation and will be back before you can raise an eyebrow.
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 72.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.