Japanese manner Enryo えんりょ

  Today, I introduce "Enryo", the manner which may be unique to
Japanese culture.
  In my opinion, there could be many English translations of the
concept. So, I may not be able to tell the accurate meaning of "Enryo".


I show you an example.

  Last Friday, I  went to old woman's house with a lawyer
on business. I did office work of the contract for sale of real estates. 
After the business, we received the fee of the work.
Furthermore, our client gave us additional fee.
I did not expect the additional fee. Because the amount of
expense charge has been already decided.
 I hesitated to get the additional fee.
 I actually, I said, no, no, no....

   I think my behavior came from the feeling of "Enryo".
 In our daily life, I sometimes see such scenes.
 On Japanese manner, we reject people's kindness once.
That behavior has the meaning of modesty in our culture.


  In this scene, even I say "no", it does not mean
"I don't like it.".
  In my opinion, people behave like that
 because  they think they do not deserve to receive such kindness or praise.

  I do not know well about other cultures.
  Do you sometimes see these scenes in your culture?

Japanese food Jizake 地酒

  You may be interested in Japanese alcohol.
I introduce Japanese sake today.
  Sake is the traditional Japanese alcohol.
  It is transparent, like water. Usually, the alcoholicity is
about 15. I got drunken if I have 300 ml.
  Sake is made from rice. It is said that you get fat
if you drink sake too much. As you know, we 
eat rice as the principal food. Our lifestyle is connected with
rice.
  In Japan, there are many kinds of bland of sake.
  People can harvest in every region in Japan.
There are a lot of  breweries in Japan.
  The taste of sake depends on the quality of water.
The sake breweries use a lot of water when they make sake.
It the water is soft water, the taste becomes more soft and sweet.
On the other hand, if the water is hard water, the taste becomes
more dry.
  We call the bland of sake in each region "Jizake".
Maybe there are thousand of Jizake in Japan.
  One of my favorite things is to try the Jizake.