A potato for me was European but it is originally an immigrant (and also it was called as a devil’s vegetation by most people because of poisons in potatoes) and it pretends as if it is fully European. That kind of circumstance influenced me a lot. Am I a potato? Personally I respect a potato’s attitude because the potato accepted people’s different interpretations for it. It was hated but now loved by everyone. 

 

I didn’t know the term Couch potato' until this year even though I have been working with potatoes for three years. 

A dictionary said : a person who watches a lot of television and does not have an active life

 

Unn and I like watching animations together. Especially we like an animation called “Gintama”. There is a character called “MADAO”. He is the couch potato. After he got fired his work, he became a typical drunk man in a park. He tried to work properly once but he couldn’t stand working properly because he couldn’t accept the request of removing his sunglasses and he ended up with being drunk again. Even though he is inappropriate for this society, he always gives his love to everyone (Somehow he seems like he sacrifice himself too) and most people look down him and he tries commit suicide often but he still tries to live(survive?). He has a essence of Setsunai and Mono no Aware which is about feeling sorry for something to feel beauty in that. It sounds so weird. But this sense works for his circumstance. 

 

I don’t know what “the active life” but if the active life is the life within a society, I may be also the couch potato that I thought. And I feel a beauty in such kind of people who are outside of this society. A lone wolf.  

 

A Japanese famous author who wrote “No longer human” was such kind of guy too. He committed suicide two or three times with always a lady. And he always could survive but the lady died instead. He had a family but even though he was almost satisfied by his life, he started to think of how he was not enough to be human. And he cried about himself and his own hatred. In the end of his life, he succeeded his suicide. I don’t know it’s ok to say that was good for him. But in a way, his dream came true finally. 

 

I put a flower in front of the potato, like a Jizou which is a Buddha holds people’s agonies. I put a red scarf after three days later I made the couch. I thought that it needs to have a clothe. The color of red means “Pureness”, “Rightness” and “Honesty”.