数年前に夫と、「クリスマスプレゼントはなくても良いことにしよう。」と決めました。クリスマスは夫にとってとても楽しみにしている大きなイベントなので、以前はプレゼントにかなり力を入れていました。若い頃は色々と普段買えないちょっと高価なものがありそれほど困らなかったのですが、この歳になるとクリスマスまで待たなくても欲しいものはその時に買いますし、まして常夏の国に住んでいるとセーターやコートやマフラーなど買えませんし、お互いそう決めるまでの数年はプレゼントのことがとてもストレスになっていました。なので、この数年は気楽です。

A few years ago, my husband and I agreed not to do expensive presents to each other for Christmas but just buy something for each other (or oneself) that we want when we see it.  Christmas is very important for my husband, he looks forward to it very much so we used to put a lot of effort into finding presents for each other for many years.  When we were young it wasn’t a problem because there were many things that we would have liked but felt too expensive to buy on a whim or whenever we wanted to, but at our age, we buy what we want when we want, we don’t need to wait until Christmas or birthday.  Besides, as we live in a hot country, we cannot buy the things that many people would, like a jumper, coat, scarf etc and we found it increasingly stressful to find presents for each other for many years.  Now the time leading up to Christmas isn’t so stressful for us!

とはいえ、全く何もないのも寂しいので、何かしらちょっとしたプレゼントはしています。夫からは本が多く、今年も何冊かありましたが、その中の１冊が有川浩さんの「旅猫レポート」の英語版「Travelling Cat Chronicles」でした。知りませんでしたが随分話題の本らしく、お子さん向けの絵本にもなっていますし、最近映画にもなったみたいですね。

However, we still want to give each other something and my husband often gets me books.  This year, among a few books he got me, there was this book – “Travelling Cat Chronicles” by Hiro Arikawa.  I didn’t know anything about this book but it seems like it has been very popular, there is a picture book version as well, and it was made into a film last year. Although it is originally a Japanese book I read it in English.

わたしはアマゾンなどで話の概要を読んでから読まないのでどういう話か全く知らないまま読み始め、最初はただ楽しい、面白いお話だと思って気軽に読んでいたのですが、すぐにそうではないことがわかりました。嫌な予感〜、と思っていたらやっぱり。。。悲しい話は避けるようにしているのですが。

I don’t like reading the story line on Amazon or anywhere before reading a book, I prefer reading it without any idea how the story will unfold.  At first I thought this book was just light-hearted funny story but quite soon after I started reading it I knew it wasn’t going to be light-hearted and I was right.  I try to avoid reading sad books these days but sometimes it just happens…

悲しいけれど心が暖かくなる、印象に残る本でした。

So, this was indeed a very sad story, but at the same time uplifting and memorable.