Add a touch of pyrotechnics to your special day.

When you travel as much as some of our writers have, you’re bound to come across hotel rooms that just seem to suck the life out of you. They aren’t especially dirty or decrepit; that would at least be a little interesting. They just have a certain inherent bleakness that makes a prison cell look cozy by comparison.

▼ We’ve censored the photo to prevent an outbreak of depression.

This effect is heightened when staying on your birthday, as our writer Ikuna Kamezawa recently found while staying in Osaka. Staring at the narrow enclosure, it made her wonder, “Was I born for this?”

Still, when life hands you desolation, you make desolationaide, and that’s just what Ikuna did by heading down to the nearest Don Quijote discount store for a quick pick-me-up. While there, she stumbled along the Dream Candle Deluxe (for Birthdays) for 1,738 yen (US$11.75). The name really said it all in that it was a deluxe candle that automatically starts rotating and playing “Happy Birthday” when lit in a most dreamlike fashion.

Even better, it can be used as a photo stand after the initial flaming birthday celebration, making it a gift that keeps on giving. Sure, candles are usually meant to be given to someone else on their birthday as a surprise, but there’s no rule saying Ikuna couldn’t treat herself to one.

At 11:45 p.m. on 20 August, Ikuna prepared to set up her Dream Candle Deluxe (for Birthdays). Her birthday was on 21 August, so she expected to have it ready to go at the stroke of midnight to celebrate yet another year on the planet.

However, after opening the plastic bag inside the box, it turned out to be a lot more complex than she expected.

According to the box, she had to clear a radius of 15 centimeters free of flammable objects. By the way, she got permission from the hotel to do this first, which we highly recommend to anyone attempting the same thing.

▼ Her colleague Masanuki had bought a similar gadget from Temu and the entire thing caught fire.

The directions got a lot more difficult after that. At one point, Ikuna was told to cut a copper wire, but she couldn’t find a wire in the location shown in the diagram.

As she mentally wrestled with the Dream Candle Deluxe’s documentation, she noticed it had already passed midnight. Sadly, it wasn’t because her friends and family sent waves of birthday messages. The clock on the TV simply said so.

She had to get this thing going asap…

After a little while, she realized she was reading the instructions intended to set up the picture stand afterwards. It turned out all she needed to do for now was light it on fire.

So, without further ado, Ikuna rung in her birthday with the Dream Candle Deluxe (for Birthdays)…

After a sparkler descended to the bottom, the petals of the candle bloomed, revealing multiple little candles that rotated around to the melody of Happy Birthday.

It wasn’t especially amazing, but Ikuna felt a strange sense of accomplishment for having done it. It wasn’t so much the difficulty she had assembling it, but the fact she made an effort to change her fate and make this a good birthday memory rather than just being the victim of her circumstances. She considered that a sign of growth.

Our writer simply stared in silence as the candles burnt themselves out. It wasn’t a very happy birthday, but it wasn’t a horrible one either, so this was a win in her books.

It seemed like a good time to start putting together the photo stand. It was pretty handy, and in addition to photos, she could also put her own messages in it.

▼ “Happy Birthday, Kamezawa-san”

The next morning, Ikuna got up, and as she prepared to check out of her slightly less gloomy hotel room, she chucked the Dream Candle Deluxe (for Birthday) in the waste basket. It’s not that she hated it. It was just too awkward to travel around with.

Actually, she probably would have thrown it away even if she was at home. After all, it wasn’t the product itself that saved her birthday; it was the memories it created that will live on in the photo stand of her heart.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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