My Little Adventure with Japanese Horoscopes
So, I had this phase, right? I was looking for something, anything, to kinda spice up the day-to-day. You know how it is. And somehow, I ended up going down the rabbit hole of Japanese horoscopes. Don’t ask me why, it just sort of happened. Maybe I saw some anime character checking theirs, or read a snippet somewhere. Anyway, I thought, “Hey, why not give it a shot?”
First off, finding them wasn’t super straightforward, not like the ones I was used to. I mean, sure, I typed “horoscope japan” into the search bar, obviously. A bunch of stuff popped up. Some in English, mostly summaries, but the real deal, the ones that looked like what people in Japan might actually read, were, well, in Japanese. Shocking, I know. My Japanese is pretty much non-existent, so it was me, a bunch of browser translation tools, and a whole lot of guessing.
What I did manage to figure out was that they seemed a bit different. Lots of them had these “lucky items” or “lucky colors” for the day. One day my lucky item was supposedly a “small mirror.” Like, what am I supposed to do with that? Carry it around and whip it out at random moments? I actually tried it for a laugh. Kept a tiny compact in my pocket. Did it bring me luck? Hard to say. I didn’t win the lottery, but I also didn’t trip over a rogue banana peel, so maybe?
I decided to follow one particular site for about a week. It was one of those that gave you a ranking, like if your star sign was number 1 for the day or languishing down at number 12.
- Monday: Ranked 7th. Advice: “Be open to new conversations.” Okay, I tried to chat more with the checkout lady. She just looked confused.
- Tuesday: Ranked 2nd! Lucky color: Sky Blue. I wore a sky blue shirt. Nothing spectacular happened, but I did get a compliment on the shirt, so that’s something, I guess.
- Wednesday: Plummeted to 11th. Oh dear. “Avoid making big decisions.” Good thing I wasn’t planning on buying a house that day.
The whole thing felt a bit like a game. Some of the advice was so vague, like “Today is a good day to reflect.” Well, isn’t every day? And the lucky items sometimes got really specific. One site said my lucky item was “something inherited from an ancestor.” Yeah, let me just casually carry my great-grandma’s ancient vase around. Super practical.
It was kind of funny seeing how they often tied into daily life stuff, like work relationships or little everyday encounters. I guess that’s the point, to give you a little nudge or something to think about. It wasn’t like those super dramatic Western horoscopes sometimes, “You will meet a tall dark stranger and your life will change FOREVER!” More like, “Maybe try a different route to work today.”
After a week or so, the novelty kinda wore off. It was an interesting little experiment, a peek into a small cultural thing. Did it change my life? Nah. Was it a fun way to kill some time and make my mundane week a tiny bit more whimsical? Yeah, pretty much. I still don’t really believe my destiny is dictated by whether or not I carry a “red pen” (another actual lucky item I saw), but it was a decent distraction. I haven’t checked one since, to be honest. Back to just winging it, which is probably for the best. Sometimes, just not knowing what the “stars” supposedly have in store is its own kind of freedom, you know?