Moye Ishimoto writes:

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot! TODAY IS TANABATA DAY. Yeah yeah, over in England, it was National Kissing Day but why would you ever want to have a kissing day? That’s disgusting. That’s how oral herpes and other gross contagious diseases get spread around. So stop kissing! BAN NATIONAL KISSING DAY! Practice safe sex! Use dental dams!

Instead, celebrate boring old fairy tales from Japan! Tonight (er…rather, right now, Tokyo time) is Tanabata Day, or Star Festival Day, which is all about some old story where two lovers (a star princess and some dude) were separated by the Milky Way and allowed to only meet once a year. On the seventh day of the seventh month, the Vega and Altair stars (representing the two lovers) can be seen together in the sky (if you can even see the stars, with all the pollution that happens) and we all go crazy by writing wishes on colorful pieces of paper and tying them to the branches of a bamboo tree, which you can either display outside your front door or dump into a river.

One year, I wrote down my wish to get a Super NES console and guess what? IT CAME TRUE. I played MarioKart for like a month to my heart’s content, and then I forgot all about it.

– Moye Ishimoto