Friday, September 19, 2014

Japanese Man Promotes Peace in Asia by Giving Strangers Free Hugs

Konichiwa! How the heck are you today. Dang cold where we are. -2C this morning when we rolled out of bed. Going up to about 14C today and 24C tomorrow, which will be nice ...and I hear that next summer is going to be hotter than ever! Small help that is right now, eh? I'm headed for the coffee pot so why don't you join me. I'll pour us both a hugful and we can hoist a virtual treat as well. Did I say hugful? Must have been a mistake - couldn't possibly have been a segue to today's topic...could it?

29-year-old Koichi Kuwabara has made it his mission to distribute ‘Free Hugs for Peace’ to as many people as he can – he’s been traveling across Asia for the past three years, hugging random people on the streets. His videos have gone viral on YouTube, garnering over 1.5 million views. He also has over 5,300 followers on Facebook and about 3,000 on Twitter.

Koichi, an aspiring school teacher, said: “I don’t want to just regurgitate theories written on textbooks. I want to tell the kids what I saw and learned first-hand from giving free hugs worldwide.”

He began his extraordinary adventure in August, 2011, just after he graduated from university. Since then, he has taken his Free Hugs initiative to several cities in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. At each location he visiyed, Koichi held up a sign that displayed the flags of Japan and the country he was visiting, along with the caption ‘Free Hugs for Peace’.

I think that's great. I assume he gets their permission first, eh? Otherwise he may pick the wrong person and either end up on his posterior or in jail for harassment, assault or whatever. 

But what if everybody gave free hugs? May sound silly but think about it. First, you'd get to meet some new people everyday. The challenge would be to hug 10 people each day and challenge them to do the same for world peace. So there's 100 hugs on the second level. Actually, 110 counting your 10. Wouldn't take long before almost everybody in the world was giving or getting hugged. Stay away from Ebola-stricken Africa and the various war zones in the world but everyone else is fair game, okay.

No need to send me a daily report unless you want to but the occasional email to let me know how our world peace initiative is going. 
 
For people far away, e-hugs work well but you only get credit for 1/2 a hug.

See ya, eh!

Bob


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