Buried stories: optional challenges

 Aside from four challenges, I tried two other things, but I was not able to get satisfactory results therefore I buried them. This is a small article separated from official four challenges.

1. The first experience of gambling: buying a lottery

Since I do not believe in luck, I have never done gambling in my life. However there are so many people to buy a lottery, so I wanted to know what is so fascinating for them and see what will happen. In order to buy a lottery, I searched the lottery shop with high probability of winning, and I went to Nishi Ginza Chance Center, which is one of the popular place for buying them, There were many people and mostly they are middle age with conservative clothings. I joined the line and waited for over 30 minutes.

Surprisingly, it was exciting for me to wait for buying a lottery which has similar atmosphere of waiting in the line at the Disney Land. Moreover I bought the "Nenmatsu Jambo" that announcement of the result was on the 31st December, the final day of 2018. This fact brought me something to look forward to for the new year. I think this is the reason why people buy a lottery even though it is an insufficient way of earning money given that the winning rate.

 It was a good experience, but I lost a lottery and this experience was not really a challenging therefore I buried this story.

2. The first experience of Zen practice: Zazen- Zen sitting meditation

As I am not familiar with religious meditation I decided to try Zazen held in Korin-in, a temple in Hiroo. I woke up five o'clock in the morning, which was the most challenging part of the day, and went to the temple. There were few people including priest of the temple sitting in a certain way. Since there was no lecture of proper way of doing Zazen, I could not really understand what I had to do. There were two sessions for 25 minutes each and 10 minutes break between them. 

It was good to have silent time in the morning and have the space to think and to put things together in the head, but I could not clear my head by this meditation, so I buried this story.

Honestly, in my opinion, every experience has discoveries, and they give me new values and ways of thinking. All of my experience was precious. Thanks to this assignment, I could broaden my perspective.