The Imperial and The Lay

As I was reading through the news on the Internet I found an article titled like "Princess Aiko Becomes Ill with Tonsillitis". I clicked the title and the news was as plain as the title with only three lines. Moreover, the content of those three lines were to me, not so significant but rather personal. It said that Princess Aiko came down with a fever of 38dg and was diagnosed acute tonsillitis, but the fever became better with prescribed medication and even though her fever cooled down she was absent from kindergarten today just to be on the safe side.

I'm not really trying to criticize the writer or the paper about publishing news as little as this, but am just wondering if they need to or not. Well, sure, a tonsillitis can be more serious than a cold but isn't always life threatening but is it really necessary for the entire nation to know the details of the health status of the Imperial family?

Judging only from my childish knowledge gained from TV shows and news the royal and imperial families overseas especially in the West seem to be more open than that of Japan. Um, I don't know if the term "open" can best describe the situation, but at least the barriers between the royal and the lay seem to be lower and closer in a friendly way.

As compared to such barriers in some of the countries, Japan's is extremely high, thick, hard and unclear completely secluding the former away from the others. We don't know what their daily routined are like. We don't know what they're like behinf those walls and the treed and gardens. But we need to know their health conditions because they are the symbol of our country and of its people i.e., us.

Having written this far I don't want to go any further with this topic because it's way to controversial and is a huge huge topic for me to discuss here. There was about a week ago a news about the publication of this book called "Princess Masako" which perhaps the controversy regarding a few passages from this book has reached overseas. I would say that yes, some of those expressions seemed to be inappropriate, but at the same time agree with the author of having to want to used those words to describe the structure of this country. The Imperial Household Agency is pretty angry with the book and we can't get them inside Japan at least not the Japanese editions.

So that's about it. Sorry it ended up messy and sort of unfinished.

Today's update on Japan Mode: Tokyo Event February 4th Week - since there weren't as many events to pick up I decided to give you a couple of ideas of where you can try FRESH strawberries picked from the fields with your own hands in and around Tokyo.