感謝祭のメッセージ
Hello, it's Asami and it's another solo episode today.
Well, it is November 28th as I speak at the minute.
Sorry for sort of irregular Koshin schedule these days.
It's just, as I've said in a previous episode, life's been sort of catching up on us.
Hopefully, we'll get back to the regular swing of things soon, so stay tuned.
Today, I woke up to a message from my friend.
This was my friend slash colleague, I guess, from my PhD days.
He was a postdoc when I was a student there, the grad student there.
He has wrapped up his postdoc after I have left and graduated the lab.
He's back home in the UK.
The message basically said, like, hey, it's been a while.
We know that we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving in Japan nor UK,
but, you know, Happy Thanksgiving, basically, was the gist of the message.
And really appreciated that.
I think throughout the podcast, a bunch of episodes that I've done both with Len and Masako,
I think, and also a fairly frequent topic among my friend circle, at least,
of the difficulties of maintaining friendship as we go through our, you know, late 20s, early 30s.
Lots of things changing in people's lives.
And for a nomad like me, who, you know, keep moving to different countries every few years,
just keeping in touch with existing friends, let alone making new friends,
or maintaining, you know, relatively new friendships that appears in your life.
It's not always easy.
And you do end up with, at least for my case, kind of a self-selective circle of friends
who do bother to send you these random notes saying like, hey, I'm thinking of you.
Hey, happy birthday.
Whatever, right?
Like, it doesn't even have to be any particular excuse.
But sometimes it's like, hey, I saw this random thing and thought of you, right?
So internet memes are great for that.
And definitely contributing to my friendship maintenance for real.
But Thanksgiving is just another sort of good time,
especially if you've spent any time of your life in the US,
as an excuse to bring up to reach out to your old friends.
感謝祭の起源と意義
And, you know, because even though Thanksgiving in its origin is kind of, you know, questionable,
it's not that thankful or giving in its origin.
Basically, it was created around the myth that, you know,
when Columbus first conquered or invaded America, the continent,
and sort of came in contact with the Native American population there,
they've like, you know, had some differences, whatever.
And this is a myth part, right?
Like, none of this is true.
But basically, they said, okay, like, you know,
they sort of like reconciled and circled around the table and shared food.
And that became Thanksgiving, sort of.
That's the myth.
The real sort of history is more gruesome and bloody, to say the least.
But I still like the spirit of that, I guess.
And, you know, maybe it's a little bit sad that people need to be reminded
to be thankful of people around you.
But as humans, we are very prone to taking people for granted.
And, you know, it's very easy to, you know,
not say thanks to people who are very dear and near to your heart.
Very dear and near to your heart.
So if you're listening to this episode and can think of, you know,
a couple of people, maybe, a handful of people, to say thanks.
You know, thanks for taking part in your life.
It doesn't even have to be that grand.
It can just be like, hey, you know, like, thinking of you, right?
And I think that for, especially when you are sort of in between
different life stages, where you're kind of in a limbo state,
maybe you're in between jobs, maybe you're going through breakups,
or you're sort of trying to figure out what the new relationship is,
whether it's romantic or otherwise.
You know, that kind of undefined, unlabeled places,
these little messages that come from your familiar faces,
I think, you know, do a lot more good than you perhaps intended to.
So it was really nice to hear from my friend.
You know, I saw him maybe in summer during my travels.
He was going through a lot of stuff at the time.
So I kind of just didn't want to, you know, be prying about his privacy
and just basically was like, look, I'm available whenever you want to talk
and, you know, hash things out.
But, like, yeah, I kind of just like left him,
gave him some space to figure his life out.
So that was extra nice to, you know, for him to bother letting me know
that he's alive and well and, you know, still figuring stuff out,
but have thought of me.
感謝祭の過ごし方
And if you have not experienced Thanksgiving,
I think...
depending on where you work, of course.
But usually it centers around big dinner with your family or your friends.
When I was in the States, I've done one or two sort of American-style Thanksgiving
thanks to people inviting me to their family Thanksgiving.
And I've also done but mostly Friendsgiving with just getting together
with a bunch of international friends, like non-American friends
who don't really have family to go home to and had nice dinner.
And that's also been like a nice memory of this time around
because it was cold in New York and it's nice to get together with people
and around food, like what do you have any complaints about, you know?
And really something about, I guess, living in New York slash Boston area
is that this time of the year is dark and cold and depressing as fuck usually.
So it's kind of like, you know, Thanksgiving is the first signal
that we're almost wrapping up the year between Thanksgiving and the end of December
but basically it just becomes like a blink of an eye and goes through real quick.
So yeah, it's just like, okay, you know...
There's absolutely nothing else that's exciting in the weather.
So might as well have fun creating some festivities on our own.
But it's true that it's a very family-centered holiday.
So it's a little bit awkward for those of us who, you know,
don't really have families in the States to go to.
Or maybe you've only just moved to the States
and you don't even have a solid group of friends either to do the Thanksgiving with.
Usually there are a ton of food left over with any of these family gatherings.
So maybe just like share that you don't really have plans on Thanksgiving
感謝祭の過ごし方
and I'm sure somebody will be more than happy to have an extra guest at their family table.
It's really usually not that awkward of a thing
because almost always there's too much food
and the more people to finish the food, the merrier.
It's usually the case, so there's that.
But also if you don't want to celebrate Thanksgiving
because you don't care about it or for moral reason
because you know the real history a little too much,
I think this is like a nice little break, you know,
after summer vacation, you hopefully, I hope, that you had.
You know, it's been like, what, four or five long months of perhaps non-stop working
and this is your first break to catch.
So, you know, if you work in university,
probably your university campus is closed from Wednesday.
So, yeah, just take some time off.
No one's going to be working those few days.
Treat yourself to a nice movie, you know.
I noticed that movies have sort of became a luxury while I was in grad school
because, you know, how hard is it to get, what, like two, three hours,
consecutive hours in your busy, busy research life to, you know, enjoy a movie.
So, you know, pick whatever cozy movies you want to do.
I've recently watched Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro.
That was a pretty good movie.
Like, you know, I have liked his other movies better,
but Frankenstein was still pretty solid.
If you don't want to watch sort of horror, gory, gothic stuff like I did,
you can maybe start on your Christmas movies.
You know, the classics like Love Actually and Holiday or Home Alone.
Like some of it didn't age super well, but, you know, it's just like revel in your nostalgia.
I think that's my favorite way to spend a long weekend anyway.
So that's my recommendations.
I'll talk to you soon.
All right, bye.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Ego de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C.
See you next time.
