Hurry Inside, You’ll Catch a Cold!
Edit: I did it! 
I have successfully added 34 smilies to my blog. You can even use them when you post a comment too. I didn’t have so many when I first started making them (maybe around 10-15 
) I got on a roll after my brother came home from our grandparents and he even helped make some for me!! 
Enjoy them as much I do!! 
I may be an American, but I did grow up with one of my parents being Asian. That being the case, I’m familiar with most American superstitions such as the number 13 is unlucky and if you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back. I’m also familiar with a few Korean superstitions and thanks to anime, Japanese superstitions as well. However, what I wasn’t expecting to find on the internet when I was making my not-so-daily blog rounds was this question posed on a website:
Is it just me or does the whole “being out in the cold makes you sick” myth seem unusually common and serious in anime? Colds are caused by a virus. Being chilled or wet has very little to do with catching a cold. In America we have old wives tales like chocolate causing zits, gum takes weeks to digest in your stomach, etc. But these are told in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion and are said to children who don’t know any better.
However, in anime it seems that people take the “cold giving you a cold” myth very seriously. If a character is a little bit wet or a little bit cold it’s always “we must get you warmed up and dry or you will get a fever!” Characters are even depicted as actually getting sick because they didn’t warm up! Perhaps it is being said in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. They don’t really believe it to be true, do they?
Personally for me, I never really gave those scenes much thought. I never thought they were silly and in fact, I just accepted it. Why? Ever since I was a little girl, my mother always told me that if I stayed outside too long in the cold, I would, in fact, end up with a cold. My father always reassured my mother that both my brother and I would be fine and that the cold has nothing to do with making us ill. Although I know this to be true, I still can’t help but come quickly inside during the winter. I’ve been programmed with that thought and since reading that question, it kind of made me realize that there are a lot of those scenes in anime. I was surprised that I just overlooked something like that but I can’t help it because that’s how I was brought up.
The answer to the question did mention a few other popular superstitions the Japanese believe, and I must admit that one of them was yet another one I was brought up to believe: If you give a cold to someone else, you’ll be cured of it. Now that it was brought to my attention, it is kind of silly to believe in it, but it was an “unconscious part of” my everyday life. However, I will go on and believe them, and then laugh at myself when I do catch myself hurrying inside when it’s cold or trying to give my cold to someone else.
So, I ended up getting the Fullmetal Alchemist Season 1 Box Set and am quite happy with it. It’s so exciting to finally own a series that I’m such a huge fan of! Now, all I need to do is get the video games and novels, and I’m on my way to becoming the FMA nerd of the house (my brother’s the Naruto nerd).
Whether you call it dorky (and yes, I do think the idea is still dorky to an extent), I went to a Naruto movie party. The party consisted of three people: Me, Zoe, and Sam. We all branded something Naruto. I put on my brother’s wristband, Zoe had her headband on, and Sam wore her oh-so-awesome Sasuke T-shirt.
