Japanese with anime voice: episode72
Hello, I’m Sachi.
June 11 is Umbrella Day. This day is designated as a memorial day because June 11 often falls on 入梅 (nyuubai). 入梅 (nyuubai) means the time of year when we enter 梅雨 (tsuyu). 入梅 (nyuubai) refers to the season when rainy days increase in terms of the angle of the sun, regardless of whether or not it actually falls into 梅雨 (tsuyu).
Umbrellas have been around for about 4,000 years, according to historical wall paintings in Egypt and Persia, but they were mainly used as parasols. Incidentally, it was a Japanese company that invented the vinyl umbrella. They developed it in 1955, and it was the first of its kind in the world. That’s amazing! There is also an interesting study on umbrellas, which shows that one of the common characteristics of rich people and people who save money is that they do not buy vinyl umbrellas but have folding umbrellas. Having a folding umbrella leads to rich people and people who save money because of risk management, cost-effectiveness, and reducing unnecessary expenses, according to the study. Indeed, this, you know, makes logical sense.
In Japan, I often hear the following as measures to save money: for wallets, a long wallet is better, a tattered wallet is not good, and for bills, it is better not to fold them, to put them in a wallet in alignment, and to put them in upside down. I don’t know if this is the same in other countries. I believed these baseless things without a doubt, and I seriously practiced them. I was a spendthrift to begin with, so there was no way I could save money by doing this. And then there was this one boy who, even though he was in high school, worked part-time to earn money by himself and spent it thoughtfully, but his wallet was in shambles. Rather than believing in baseless things, money will decrease if you spend it without thinking, and increase if you spend it with thinking, that’s all.
Not buying a vinyl umbrella means that you won’t lose money buying a cheap one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hesitated to buy clothes that cost more than 5,000 yen and ended up buying clothes that cost less than 2,000 yen. In the end, I don’t even realize I’m spending money because the prices are so low. People who save money do not spend it to satisfy their immediate greed, but spend it with an eye to the years ahead, so the money comes around. Money comes around and around.
A while ago, I was talking to someone about volunteering. When I say volunteer, I don’t mean something big like disaster relief or something where people’s lives are at stake, but something where you are just helping someone. At first, they start out with a light-hearted feeling that they are not busy and that it will make the other person happy. But when they start to take you for granted and use you as a matter of course, it’s not quite the same thing. I thought to myself, “I see what you mean. Once or twice is fine, but if it becomes a regular occurrence, then I think a certain amount of compensation is necessary.
One person asked a college friend to help him save money on moving expenses. He said that as a thank-you for their help, they bought him yakiniku (barbeque), but he spent a lot of money on it, and when he was alone to unpack his belongings, he found that some dishes were broken. In the end, he said, it would have been cheaper to hire a moving company. That’s what it means to spend money, isn’t it? We should spend money when we need to. Otherwise, it can crack relationships with people, and we end up spending more money than we should.
So, I would like to conclude this issue with a little bit of my own personal ramblings about the way I think about how to spend money. A few years ago, I was in a very serious car accident. It was in my partner’s car, which had been brand new for three years. It was an accident that was completely caused by my carelessness, and I was so depressed. I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing? What have I done wrong? I had destroyed my partner’s car, not my own. To give you an idea of how big an accident it was, the car did a half-turn at an intersection and ended up in the oncoming lane at a stoplight, with all the airbags flying out and the left window shattered front and back. The body of the car was bent and the car was scrapped because it collided with a 2-ton truck.
Fortunately, no one was injured in such a serious accident. I was very depressed, and my partner said to me,
“You can fix a car as much as you want if you pay for it. But if something happens to you or the other driver, money can’t fix it.”
How much I was saved by these words. And I realized that this was a true man. With his words in mind, I too will be careful about how I spend my money.
