It’s chicken breast tonight again, Darling －今夜も鶏の胸肉だぞ、ダーリン－

“Excuse me, could you help me?  I can’t find the kind of chicken breast I am looking for.”

“Certainly, Sir.  Exactly what kind of chicken breast are you looking for?”

“I’d like a skinless, boneless, low fat, low salt, ethically farmed, organic fillet of chicken.  It should be domestically sourced and should not have been fed anti-biotics or growth hormones, or washed in chlorine.”

“Uh... Is that all?”

“The best before date should be no earlier than the day after tomorrow, and the weight should be between 310 and 330 grams, and the price after tax no higher than 380 yen.”

“Umm... Let me just check.  A-ha!  This piece of chicken breast meets all your requirements!”

“I don’t want that one.  It has too much plastic packaging.”

*

Does anybody else feel exhausted by the amount of things they are asked to remember when making even simple choices in a supermarket?  One day the news says that if you want to save the environment, you should buy product B, not product A.  The next day they say that if you want to avoid getting fat, you should buy product C, not product B.  The next day they say that if you want to save the farmers, you should buy product A, not product C.

And if you try to pay attention to the information provided on the product labels, you need a degree in chemistry to understand what it really contains.

That’s why I have developed a simple system for choosing between foods in a supermarket.  I avoid the cheapest items.  I avoid imported food from some countries which have a bad reputation for adding strange hormones and chemicals to their food.  And I almost always cook the same thing, so that I don’t have to make any new choices at all.

Vocabulary:

ethically – in a morally good or correct way

domestically sourced – bought (by the supermarket) from within the same country, not imported from another country

anti-biotics – a medicine such as penicillin which kills micro-organisms

growth hormones – a kind of chemical produced by the body to make the cells divide and the body grow more quickly

washed in chlorine – in some countries chicken and other foods are washed in chlorine after production in order to kill bacteria

the best before date – on food labels, the date after which the food cannot be enjoyed at its tastiest

exhausted – very tired

On Readiness and Eggs －準備ができている状態と卵について－

You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  So says the proverb.  But you can buy a ready-made omelette, and heat it up in the microwave, without ever having to break an egg yourself.  Which do you value more: the convenience of the ready-made meal, or the satisfaction of eating something you have made yourself?

Perhaps the ideal choice is somewhere in-between.  Instead of cooking a meal from scratch, or heating up a ready-meal, many people now make “ready-to-cook” meals.  The ingredients have all been chopped and packed for you.  You just have to throw them all into a frying pan or whatever to finish the process.

According to an article I read recently, the growing popularity of these ready-to-cook meals should not be surprising.  Many psychological studies have shown that people assign more value to things if they have helped to make them.  For example, in one experiment, participants were taught to make some simple origami objects.  They also watched an expert making some beautiful origami objects.  They were then allowed to offer money to buy the creations.  People tended to offer much more money for the things that they had made themselves, even if the quality was much poorer.

So are there any other industries which could try to give customers greater satisfaction by involving them in the creative process, whilst keeping an element of convenience?

How about ready-to-knit sweaters?  Hmm... that might be a little too much effort for most people.

So how about “ready-to-peel” bananas?  No, actually, I think we already have those.

“Ready-to-finish” jig-saw puzzles?  These puzzles would be extremely difficult, but come 90 per cent already completed.  The customer would get the satisfaction of finishing a difficult puzzle without having to do most of the work.

How about “ready-to-write” novels?  They would be great for me.  The basic plot-line of a story would be provided – Character A falls in love with character B but in Chapter 2 they have an argument and... etc.  Then all you would have to do was fill in some absorbing dialogue and interesting characters and you have written your first novel!

Or “ready-to-pedal” taxis?  The car doesn’t have an engine.  You have to pedal along with the driver to make it to your destination.  That would also be popular with fitness enthusiasts and environmentalists.  This might actually be quite a good idea.  (Copyright William Lang, 2019!)

[Please insert your own joke here to complete the article.]

Vocabulary:

a proverb – a traditional saying, often giving some simple life advice or observation about life

to do something from scratch – to do something from the very beginning, not building on previous work

an ingredient – one part of a food item or dish

a psychological study – an experiment designed to show how people behave

to assign value to something – to decide how much something is worth

to peel (a banana) – to take the skin off (a banana)

absorbing – tending to draw your attention; fascinating

to pedal – to push your legs in a circular motion, such as to make a bicycle move

Video Killed the Vegetable Star －やさいスターの悲劇－

Is it better to be doing something great and creative, or is it better to be watching a video of yourself doing something great and creative?

The answer seems obvious.  It ought to be much more fulfilling to be doing something great than watching yourself doing something great.  But people seem to prefer watching the video.

Think of all the people who take pictures of their lunch, and post it on Instagram.  Wouldn’t it be better just to enjoy the meal in front of you?

I realised how deeply this fascination with watching our highlights on video runs when my two year-old son showed signs of it.  I can play the guitar a little, and recently started to practise again for the first time since my son was born.  He watched me playing and immediately wanted to get involved.

“Join Daddy play guitar!” he demanded.  So I had to stop practising and let my son sit beside me and pull some strings on the guitar.  For a few weeks he was demanding to play the guitar every day.  He started to get quite good at it.  I made some chords with my left hand and let him pull the strings to make a noise.  He started to get the hang of plucking the strings together to make a recognisable chord.  Then one day he started singing a song that one of his teachers plays at his nursery.  It is sung in Japanese and is a song about vegetables.  The lyrics are something like, “Vegetable, vegetable, vegetable, vegetable!  Tomato, tomato, tomato, tomato, yeah!  Radish, radish, radish, radish, yeah!”

I don’t know how his nursery teacher plays it but with my son and I playing together it sounded like a weird new genre of nursery-punk.  My wife heard us playing and shot a video of the performance. 

And that’s the sad part of the story.  We made the mistake of showing our son the video.  From that moment he stopped wanting to play the guitar.  Now all he wants to do is watch the video of his performance.  “Watch video!  Watch video play guitar!”  So the nursery-punk vegetable star has retired from playing.  And it’s all because of the power of selfie video.

Vocabulary:

fulfilling – causing happiness by allowing someone’s character or abilities to develop fully

to pluck something – to pull the strings of an instrument to make a noise

a selfie – a picture of yourself, taken by yourself