The day before yesterday was a great mid-autumn moon. However, the full moon was last night, October 2nd. It seems that this year's full moon was delayed by one day due to the calendar.
The photo was taken from the balcony of my house on October 1, and to me it looks almost full.
I approached my wife to show her the moon, but she wasn't very interested in it, and when I told her that in Japan we have dumplings and silver grass for moon viewing, she asked me what a dumpling was. I was asked, "What do you think of dumplings for moon viewing? However, the custom of dumplings for moon viewing has gone by the wayside.
The custom of observing the moon during the harvest moon was introduced from China in the Heian period (794-1192), and it is still celebrated as the Mid-Autumn Festival in China. In Japan it is called dumplings, but in China people eat mooncakes and send them to their loved ones.
This time of year is the end of the harvest of taro and rice, and it is also meant to celebrate the harvest.
In the Philippines, where it is everlasting summer, They don't have the concept that autumn is the season for harvesting, and they don't have the custom of watching the moon, so it may not be surprising that my wife was not interested in the full moon.
By the way, the word "full moon" reminds me of a commercial for the "Full Moon Couple Green Pass" sold some 40 years ago, when JR was still a national railway in Japan. The commercial, which featured the wife, Mieko Takamine (then 63), and the husband, Ken Uehara (then 72), soaking in a hot spring, was a big hit. Incidentally, the commercial was narrated by Tatsuya Jo.
Surprisingly, this Full Moon Couple Green Pass is still sold today. It's also available to couples who are 88 years of age or older in total, just as it was then.
What was even more surprising was the price. The commercials at the time showed that it was 75,000 yen. Today's price is 84,330 yen. The apparent difference in price is 9,330 yen, but since there was no consumption tax 40 years ago, the price was only 1,663 yen higher than the current price without tax.
The Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has announced that Japan's deflationary period (a period of two or more years of falling prices) was from 2001 to 2012, but my sense is that it may be much longer.
Still, I'm really surprised that it's only 1,663 yen different from 40 years ago.
The Go to Travel campaign has been launched as an economic policy for COVID 19, and it's travel season for the upcoming season. Let's go somewhere with my wife. By the way, our total age is 92 years old at the moment, so we are definitely a full moon couple.
