Thomas & Tanka

In Japan, certain ages are lucky and unlucky. For children the years 7, 5 and 3 are important (in a good way). They refer to it as "shichi-go-san" (seven-five-three), and, basically, it means that families have professional photographs taken and visit a shrine when their children are 7, 5 and 3.

In Fukui, many of us signed up for "host families". We don't actually ever live with the families, but we do have dinner and go to events together. My family is a neurosurgeon, his wife, a 7 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. I had dinner with them last Monday. The girl has taken a real liking to the card game Uno, and the boy, who has only begun speaking in full sentences recently, doesn't seem like he would be sick of Thomas the Tank Engine even if it were the only programme running on television for the rest of his life. For those of you who've never played Uno with Japanese children before, here's a synopsis of the evening:

Player 1: The 7 year old - must win against at least one parent before game can end
Players 2 & 3: Parents - happy the kids aren't making a ruckus
Player 4: Me - happy that we're playing a game that won't require any instructions in Japanese
Wild Card: The 3 year old - wants desperately to be involved in spite of the fact that he has no idea what's happening.

The wild card jumped into my team (literally). In working together with him, I learned that all the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine have a number, because he would look at my cards and say, "ooh, yellow Thomas! Red Percy!" He also was very swift to notice when one of the cards didn't look like the others, "ooh, a black one!"
Then, having anounced all my cards to the other players he blurted out the sweetest little irony I've heard in a long time, "it's fun when everyone plays together!"
Yes, fun, fun fun.
^o^


In other news, the teachers in my visiting school have been writing poems to display for next week's culture festival. Unfortunately, I won't be able to see the festival since it's not a day of the week when I normally visit the school, but I was asked to write something. The format was Tanka (短歌), which is similar to Haiku but longer. Haiku works in a syllable count of 5-7-5, and Tanka is 5-7-5-7-7.

Here's what I wrote:

父の庭　 chichi no niwa
かぼちゃのそばで kabocha no sobade
剣になる 　 ken ni naru
ひまわりの茎　 himawari no kuki
相手を叩く aite wo tataku

I made a rough English translation following the format too:

A sunflower stalk
that swings like a katana
strikes my opponent
next to all of the pumpkins
within my father's garden