A Flower Unlike Any Other in The World

I've never known that much about the Japanese pop group Smap. I thought they were just another boy band type group. While written by someone outside of the group, I ran the translated lyrics to one of their hits, 世界中唯一僅有的花 (A Flower Unlike Any Other in The World). I think the song contains a very impressive message.

(Click to go to video on YouTube)

Artist: Smap
Title: Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana (A Flower Unlike Any Other in The World)
Words: Makihara Noriyuki
Music: Makihara Noriyuki

There’s no need to be No. 1
you’ve always been a very special only one.

I saw many kinds of flowers lined up in front of the flower shop.
everyone has their favorite kinds but all of them are pretty.
Without competing to see which was the best among them,
they were standing straight up proudly inside the bucket.
So why then do we humans have to compare ourselves to one another?
Even though each and every person is different,
why do we want to be number one?
Yes we are each
 A flower unlike any other in the world
 and each and everyone of us carries a different seed
 We should focus all our efforts on trying to make that flower bloom.

There are people who are constantly unsure of what they want,
as they laugh a little put out.
It can’t be helped, all those flowers,
that did everything they could to bloom, are pretty.
when at last that person comes out of the store,
they’re holding a colorful bouquet
and I see them smiling happilly as they go by me.
I never knew their name but
that day they made me smile.

We too are like flowers that bloom in places where no one pays any attention.
Yes we too are each
 A flower unlike any other in the world
 and each and everyone of us carries a different seed

We should focus all our efforts on trying to make that flower bloom.
 Small flowers and big flowers, none are the same as one another.

There’s no need to be No. 1
you’ve always been a very special only one.

This year has been an up an down year...

If up means weight, then mainly up. It seems that while I’m traveling, I’ve managed to gain weight. I’m not as into regular exercising as I was last year and I am probably eating too much at the breakfast buffets at the hotel. I’m haven’t quite figured out the correlation between eating too much at the breakfast buffets and gaining weight, but I’ll probably figure it out.

At any rate, based on the previous post that sitting is probably one of the worst things you can do all day from a health perspective, I have been using the counter as my new home office desk so that I stand while working. And it is a lot of work!

Unfortunately I haven’t had any time to exercise ever since coming back from my previous business trip, and I don’t know if it is just my body trying to get back to its earlier weight, but so far, I’m getting much closer to weight I was earlier this year.

I have a new admiration for people who have to be on their feet for their jobs.

Also, I have an additional strategy for losing weight. It is to chew my food 30 times before swallowing. I tried looking up some info about this, but most of the pages which refer to chewing well in relation to weight loss mention the fact that it takes time for the brain to register you are full. However, there was some show where someone lost weight simply by chewing his food 30 times (not more, not less). Of course, it has to do with the fact that by chewing thoroughly, it will take longer so your brain has a chance to register you are full, but this show also indicated that the act of chewing helped signal to your brain that it is getting satisfied from a hunger point of view. Therefore, in theory, this means chewing well in itself also allows your brain to feel it is full. And finally, this person chewed his food exactly 30 times, not more. My theory with that is if it takes you more than 30 chews to swallow, you’ve probably taken more than you need in one mouthful. By learning how to chew exactly 30 times, you learn the right proportion for each mouthful making it, which per above, helps prevent overeating.

Of course, counting 30 times is quite monotonous, but I break it into 3×10 segments… That is, whenever I remember to count at all.

See more progress on: get in shape