W marcu jak w garncu.

There's an old polish proverb, "W marcu jak w garncu", literal translation being "In march like in a pot" (oh the translation sounds terrible). The allegory works like this: in the month of march, like a pot, it's sometimes cold (when the pot is not heated) and sometimes hot (when it's cooked in). In Japanese, they have 三寒四温 (さんかんしおん), literally meaning 3(days) of cold and four (days) of warmth.

How felicitous both of them are of my Japan march-experience. I have been quite restless, since all my travel plans have been scheduled for April, May and June, when the weather will finally turn warm (or so I expect). That in consequence, meant I had to wait over and survive the idleness of March in Tokyo - the iddleness of no classes and being locked in my room during rainy and cold days. Occasional sunny days would not last enough, followed by freezing and gloomy rain. That's actually abit annoying about Japanese break system - it's not cold enough to go skiing again, not warm enough to go "beaching".
But there was one perk:

Olympics figure skating hype.

The end of Feb offered a bit of Olympics related entertainment and of course, no way could I miss out on the big Yuna Kim vs Mao Asada debate. It was quite fun stalking some of my Korean or Korean-American acquaintances on facebook and see:

1. How almost each of them were obsessed with their ice-skating queen. Some had descriptions such as "I wish I could ice-skate" or simply "XYZ is a fan of Yuna Kim" posted all over their profiles.
2. Some where quite nationalistic.

That's an interesting topic I have to admit. Having talked to a very close Korean friend, currently in Korea, I learned that Koreans got very nationalistically heated about the competition between those two. Unnecessarily hostile, he said, bringing up past nationalistic grudges. I find it ironically against the spirit and purpose of Olympics themselves, which was to promote healthy and peaceful competition, not as a background for more nationalistic abuses.

The Japanese public opinion was much better-behaved then, but of course, for Japan as ex-aggressor, it would have been a terrible diplomatic blunder to even try touch nationalistic aspect in this rivalry. They really kept it to the individual's level - it's our Japanese Mao and a foreign rival, could be almost any country (China, or US or Canada), but happened to be Korean. Japanese commentators did not shy away from applauding Kim for her clearly superior performance.

Funnily enough, just a month after the Olympics finals, on March 27th, Mao claimed the gold in the Figure Skating World Championship, Kim getting silver.

But my favourite comment of all, came from Ben (as always) - "Hey, so which of them is Korean and which Japanese? They look EXACTLY the SAME!"


Unfortunately, our Polish figure-skating rep, Anna, was worse than appalling, claiming the very last spot in the short program and leaving all the Poles wondering "Who the heck let her in?". She was also very fat and had a terrible costume, an ado from me as a woman ;).