superstitions

There was a lunch to welcome newcomers to BST today, and it was great: lots of moms and a few dads who are new to the school, but not new to Tokyo, so I got an earful of advice and recommendations, from cheap dinners to feed the kids (yakisoba, stir-fried noodles) to various chopsticks faux pas. Such as: never leave them points down and sticking out of a bowl of rice, because that is how rice is served during a Buddhist death ceremony! and never pass anything from your chopsticks to another person's chopsticks, because at Buddhist death ceremonies, where bodies are cremated, after the body has been burned, attendees pick up the bits of bone that remain (!!) and pass them to each other using chopsticks. Nobody wants to be reminded of death while they are trying to enjoy some fatty tuna.

Another death thing: At my first private Japanese lesson today, I learned the alternative ways to say the numbers four and seven. Two of the numbers I learned in karate class back in New York -- 4 is shi (shee) and 7 is shichi (shee-chee) -- are considered bad luck, because "shi" also means "death" in Japanese so instead of saying that someone is "shi sai" or "shichi sai" (4 years old, 7 years old) you say "yon sai" and "nana sai." Apparently some Japanese avoid saying shi altogether, but my teacher said that as long as I used the alternative words when expressing age, I would be okay. "Never say shichi sai because shi means death and age is related to living things," she said. She added that most Japanese hospitals do not have a 4th floor, because who wants to be on the death floor when you're trying to get better?