Spark Joy or not? Tidying Up With Marie Kondo

I read a buzz about Marie Kondo's Netflix show so I watched the first episode yesterday. Marie Kondo is very famous in Japan and she's called "Konmari" in short. I've read her book once or twice and I tried her method, (don't ask me if it worked or not) but after I've watched it, and I actually wrote about her book 3 years ago and I totally skipped the most important thing she's talking about.

"Does it spark joy or not for you?"

I have watched the first episode with a young couple with two little adorable children in a beautiful house. Their house doesn't look so bad but got a lot of junk.

Before starting tidying up the house, Marie Kondo sits down on the floor in the house and greet to the house, like meditating.

Then, take out all the clothes you have and put into one pile

Next, take the clothes one by one in your hand and see if that particular thing spark joy or not. If not, you say "thank you" and say goodbye.

She separates into four categories; Clothes, Paper, Miscellaneous, Sentimental (maybe wrong, but something like that) and does (let the family do) the same method.

After completing the cleaning, everybody's life gets better with extra space, and most of all, they can live life with something sparks joy for you.


By the way, 1/21/19 was a full moon, but not the usual full moon, it was

SUPER BLOOD WOLF MOON

within the spiritual people, we wish to the moon twice a month. Once at the new moon,  then at the full moon. You make a wish at the new moon and at the full moon, you let go your old thought that you don't need like negative thoughts, and see how you're doing towards your wish.

so until the next new moon which is Feb 4th, 2019, it's a good time to let go that doesn't spark joy for you.

In this corner of the world (Japanese Anime Movie)

In this corner of the world is a Japanese animation movie. This animation illustrates how ordinary Japanese citizens survive in world war II era.

Suzu is a girl who likes to draw.  She grew up in a loving family and she got married to a guy she didn't know to a city of Kure, a city a few hours away by a train from her hometown Hiroshima.

The city of Kure had a war plant making warships, so this city was a target of American attacks. It gets pretty sad because food got scarce, had so many nights attacked, pretty sad, traumatic thing happened.. Please just watch in a theatre near you or in Netflix!!

Growing up in Japan, my generation got an education of "War makes people miserable" mindset. When I was the first grade, we read how elephants in a zoo had to starve to death because zookeepers couldn't give an injection to them to euthanasia because their skin is too thick. The elephants did tricks trying to get some snacks as a reward. Zookeepers were also so sad, they loved the elephants but they don't want the elephant to go free if the bomb hit the zoo.

I was surprised to see the people in the U.S. don't seem to have the same value, "War is a bad thing" when Iraq war and Afgan war happened, they seem to have more like "Yeah, do the war!" mindset.

Why? Americans got wealthy by the war, especially after the World War II.  This business model didn't always work after Vietnam, but it's still powerful.

It's really important to know war make people sad and suffering.

PeaceWings Apparel 

Good bye Cable TV!

We canceled our Cable TV from Time Warner Cable (Now called Spectrum) a month ago.

We were paying about $160 a month for Internet, Cable TV with HD Recorder, and home phone (which we didn't even use)

My husband watch some basket ball games and some racing and I used to record Japanese news show that airs in the morning, but otherwise, we would watch Netflix or Amazon Prime TV for kids show.

One month after cutting off cable TV, My husband (who watches TV the most) doesn't seem like bothered by not having Cable TV. I guess there's lots of options in this digital world.

I don't miss Japanese TV show since I can read yahoo news in Japanese. Its better for me that I don't  have to waste an hour to watch it.

We only pay for the internet and saved about $100 a month.

Honestly, there were hundreds of channels on the cable but I didn't find shows that I was interested.

In Japan, there are 6 major channels and not many people subscribe to Cable TV, we would use HD recorder to record shows and I wish there's something similar in here too. (for the antenna TVs) There might be one but I don't have knowledge or energy to research.




I watch lots of shows from Netflix.



Good old TV Antenna.