Flowers in may

These are the roses on the walls of the houses in my neighbourhood.

These flowers and their lovely scent please me every year though I can't enjoy the scent at present because of my damned cold X(

I don't know the owners of those houses but I thank them and also admire them because I'm terribly bad at taking care of flowers X)
Anyway I can say that growing flowers and keeping them in good condition enrich not only the owner's life but also many of his neighbours', and how much just some flowers give us the joy of the life!

I hope my sense of smell would be back in time for the scent of the roses...

about tip

Recently, The New York Times, the famous American journal ran the article about how much Asian people usually tip in the restaurants. The article said it's Japanese who gave the least amount of tip, and came to the conclusion "The richer the country, the less likely citizens are to tip".

This article made most of us Japanese laugh, I think. This columnist, who might be an American, also the editor in chief, didn't know the fact that in our country there is NO social custom of tipping at all?
Here in Japan the concept of "tip" is considered still very strange though many people know it from their travel experiences. I often feel the tip system is quite reasonable when I travel abroad but here in my own country we don't need it at all.
And I heard there are many other countries where people don't have the habit of tipping.

We tend to think that "our" social custom is not "ours" but the very universal one, but unfortunately it could be a mistake very often. And I'm afraid that this kind of small lack of the knowledge & understanding would cause the more serious misunderstanding, sometimes.

So, anyway, this is just a small funny episode but please, my Western friends, if you'd have the opportunity to visit Japan in near future, don't leave your tip money on restaurant table which would just confuse and sometimes trouble the waiters XD