Partly due to wordplay with numbers, virtually every day on the Japanese calendar has some theme or special event attached to it, some traditional, some not so.
For no immediately apparent reason, Dec. 10 has been officially approved by the Japan Anniversary Association as "Gomenne no Hi" (“I’m sorry” Day) in Japan. To commemorate the occasion a site called Ayamari Bijin (Beautiful Girls Apologizing) has been counting down the days to the event with a new video of a different woman apologizing uploaded each day.
Most of the apologies are pretty mundane stuff like “I’m sorry for being late to the office, I slept in,” but there was the odd one that made me chuckle. Here are a few of my faves:
- “The other day on the train I gave my seat up, saying ‘please sit down sir.’ Actually it wasn’t an old man, it was an old lady. I’m sorry.”
- “I was eating sushi with my friend and put tons of wasabi under hers when she wasn’t looking. Sorry.”
- “I’m too tall and always hog the space under the kotatsu (heated table). Sorry.”
- “When I was a child I used to put the food I hated on my older brother’s plate. Sorry.”
- “Dear mum, you finally made me walnut bread, but it was so horrible I threw it down the toilet. Sorry.”