Period of Popularity

Moteki is relatively a new Japanese word. Some people talk about and believe that “everyone has at least one short period of life when one enjoys more romantic attention than usual.” That is moteki.

If those people are right, I had such a period of life when I was a kindergartener.

One day, when I was a kindergartner, a girl gave me a paper. It wasn’t a letter. Most kindergartners can’t write letters. Instead, it was a strange picture. I assumed it was a kind of colored paper, and I kept it in my treasure box.

A few days later, someone called our house. Then, my mother severely scolded me.

The paper I had been given was not colored paper. It was paper money. I can’t remember exactly how much it was worth. But I think it might have been a lot. I didn’t understand the situation, but I gave the money to my mother. I think she returned the money to the female kindergartener’s parents with an apology.

That was on Valentine’s Day.

On Valentine’s day it is a Japanese custom for some women to give chocolates to men they love.

The female kindergartner wanted to give me chocolate, but she didn’t know where she could buy it because our town is kind of rural. So, she decided to give me cash instead. Of course, she stole the cash from her parents.

That was my moteki. I was almost a bad male companion who gets female customers to steal money and exploits them.

Now, bad male companions are a social problem in Japan. These male companions take a lot of money from young female guests. Some female guests steal money to give the companions.

I did this half a century ago.

I have never experienced such a moteki again. I have never been given cash by other girls.

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Picture by poosan