nihon?
actually there're quite a lot of stuff in prior to that. surely, we are now filled with ambivalent emotions. but for me at the moment, i'm plainly relieved that i'm finally spared from the hellish exam (yes, i use that word again)
today, aside from that final paper, a lot of stuff ran through my mind. i mean random stuff like what usually filled this head of mine. sometimes i find myself so vulnerable to any distraction when i'm the middle of something else because i tend to think to hard, it sometimes too tiring to do what i originally about to do by then. call me silly, but that's who i am.
but one thing that attracted my attention was when i visited our university library in the morning to prepare before entering the exam hall. like any library do, books are what they contain and i can't help peeking my heads on the racks especially the japanese ones. here's where i discovered an interesting children's picture book. it's actually a simple story told in a simple way, yet it leaves quite an impression. a big one.
the title in english would be "What is it like?". if i were to tell about the content, it'll spoil everything for those who haven't read it yet. what i can say is you can hardly predict such a story it has here. it'll make you dumbfounded for a while and it'll strike something inside and leads you think further and deeper, it's visceral(yeay, i can finally use this word!). and it subtly highlights how imagination is truly a powerful tool-something we think we have perfectly known all along but tend to heedlessly forget when struggling to get through everyday lives. quite a brilliant work. aside from that, one of the prominent message might be about our perceptions towards the less-fortunate people. like in here, the emerging characters are people from this group whom most of us has little encounter with and very little thoughts about them. usually, most of us would only think about how pitiful they are and it only stops there, no more than that. the thing is if we care to take a little more time to delve deeper we'll discover more than we can ever think. thus, the gist of it all, THINK!
that exact theme reminds me so much of my Maou: Juvenile Remix manga. aahh, i really will reread them this holiday
seems like this post will still be longer from now on, exam's over after all.
so, once i finished reading about that, it's sharing session, right? my friends are as touched as me too with the picture book. and another stuff arises from there. from our limited japanese material, we came to our naive conclusion that japan's children books are indeed rich with such stuff, i mean something with human touch and goes deep rather than superficial and silly stories (is that really the case though?). well, based in our experience when we were young, that is. if i could recall, what i was exposed to was ladybird's 'peter and jane', or the malay stories would be 'pak pandir' or 'pak kaduk' or 'si kancil' renowned from old tales and stuff similar to that. later it goes to something more knowledge-based materials like figuring out how rain forms and stuff like that. i won't really say i did read encyclopedia even though it's lined up nicely on the rack which i only realized of their existence quite later, but i was attracted to animal stuff especially with stunning photos. oh yeah, i did once inspired to be photographer for national geographic.
that's all now still left as a dream far to be realized. and i'm now apparently treading on another kind of path.
probably this is only me who's oblivious to the true situation, but what i feel is that in my current society, we are so in a rush to reach such development where industry and economy are the vital core, hence we lack with people that focuses on the counterpart of it, the human part, to shape people into becoming people who care to think, not programmed robots. certainly there are those people but still, the former far outweighs the later thus the unbalance. okay, i'm in no position to say further, i'm no philosophical expert and my knowledge of the world might not be greater than that of 'katak bawah tempurung'. i can't analyse whatsoever and whatsoever with no data (hahaha, i actually said this, this is so science student?). here, what i mean is, i got a lot more to discover, the whole expanse of the world which takes more than a lifetime to figure out.
i'm looking forward to nihon.
