I can't believe I forgot to post Happy Towel Day on May 25th! For all you hard-core Douglas Adams' fans out there, please know, we did actually celebrate with you, even if I am just now getting around to actually posting about it.
Towel Day is held in honor of Douglas Adams, the author of the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. Participants are supposed to carry around a towel on May 25th to show their love and remembrance of this amazing sci-fi author.
Why a towel, you might ask? Check out this except from the first book in the series, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:"
"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value.
You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons
of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded
beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep
under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of
Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet
it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off
noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of
Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you
can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies
as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still
seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some
reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker
has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in
possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask,
compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit
etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker
any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might
accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who
can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it,
struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his
towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."
You can clearly see just how important a towel can be. :) Brandon and I proudly donned our towels and snapped a picture of us ready to hitch an interstellar ride down at the Sea Wall. Definitely got a few laughs from people. :) So here's your reminder for next year - mark May 25th as Towel Day on your calendars and be sure to have your towel handy!
---Arielle
P.S. We did think it was kind of ironic that we were Americans in Japan, celebrating a British author. Definitely a multicultural celebration! :)
