Japanese Superstitions – A Continuing Series – Part 1

Stevie Wonder may not have sung his popular hit Superstitious about the Japanese but I have adopted it as the official theme song of this journal entry. Play it in the background as you read. It makes for a funky soundtrack. The Japanese are some of the most superstitious folks on the planet followed only by that crazy cat lady in the house on the corner. You know the one. She has the Japanese beat by about two superstitions and thirty cats. I have no witnessed all of these, only a select few, but I can vouch for their validity because the internet never lies, right? Do you have your Stevie Wonder playing? Good! On to the list of superstitions!

The Downside To Resting After Lunch
Some Japanese believe that should you have a nice meal and choose to lie down immediately after consuming that nice meal you will transform into a cow. This is why Japan doesn’t have a Thanksgiving, me thinks. The tryptophan would create a overflow of bovine roaming the streets, forming gangs, milking poor people to death until the country is overrun and only Rambo could save us! AHHHHH!!!!! Frankly, if you wanted to give this superstition a dash of fun I’d say you turn into whatever it was you were eating. The streets would be populated with hundreds of Chickens, carrots and Kit-Kat bars! The next time you see some food lying in the road be cautious and thoughtful of your actions towards it. That half-eaten Whopper may have once been a sleepy, but full, Japanese person.

Numbers of DEATH!!!
The Japanese word for death is shi which sounds a whole lot like the Japanese word for four and so four now has deadly connotations. I have been in a building or two that didn’t have a fourth floor. Now, here is a little factoid that might seem peculiar given the above. Die Hard 4 back in the US and Canada is called Live Free Or Die Hard but here it is called by the original working title Die Hard 4. Here you have the number four AND the world die in the same title. Surely this must be the most unlucky film since Poltergeist! Number nine…number nine…number nine…sorry, stuck in a Beatles moment there. Number 9 is also unlucky as it is often pronounced as ku which sounds much like the Japanese word for suffering. The guy naming the numbers really needed to put some more thought into this. I have read that hotels and hospitals will also omit the number nine from their number system. They are running out of numbers here! 13 is also considered unlucky here just as it is back in the Western world. This was actually adopted by the Japanese from us. I guess they thought they didn’t have enough unlucky numbers. The rule for gift giving here is to never give things in quantities of four…except Die Hard films.

Watch Out For Snakes
It is said that whistling at night will attract snakes. This is also true of playing the flute at night. You want a snake just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t ya? You just put your lips together and blow. This, like most of these superstitions, has an underlying meaning. Don’t whistle at night is another way of saying don’t bother the people living around you. The snake can also be taken to mean a thief or other criminal as whistling will alert them to your presence. Before reading of this superstition I made the mistake of whistling. I didn’t attract snakes, though. I attracted an entire hoard of hamsters. I guess whistling Chopin off key isn’t good enough to summon the snakes so they send in the hamsters. Now I have all these hamsters and don’t know what to do with them. Wait, maybe I could feed them to the snakes.

If You Play With Fire You’re Going To Get Pissed
Nothing deters the jovial youthful fascination with arson then urine soaked mattress. In this superstition, although it is more like an old wives tale or a warning, it is aid that if you play with fire you don’t get burned but, instead, you get wet. Playing with fire, it is said, causes you to wet the bed. Although this doesn’t place an age limitation on the arsonists it is mainly told to children who may have the inclination to take some matches and set things alit. Of course, this particular superstition makes it easier for the police to catch a fire starter. Simply follow the smell to the mattress puddle. Hopefully they don’t take the word “play” too loosely because should jugglers really suffer constant undergarment purchases because of their chosen trade?

Don’t Get Nailed At Night Or You’ll Be Cut Out
The headlines for these aren’t always easy to write, you know! So I take a shower before, look down and notice my nails are a touch too long. I reach for the nail-clippers to give myself a little trimming and suddenly I can’t watch my parents die. Yes, this is an odd one. Cutting your nails at night is considered unlucky and if you do it is believed that you will not be present when your parents pass. How clipped overgrown toe and fingernails relate to being able to say goodbye to a loved one is a bit of a puzzler. I can’t really see why this would be such a terrible thing to merit such punishment in the eyes of the Japanese. I suppose I could see it more clearly if it were you cutting your parents nails at night, that’s just icky, just can’t understand why your own toenail clippings somehow omit you from the end of your parents lives.

Don’t Thumb A Ride With A Hearse
Don’t Thumb A Ride With A Hearse
I guess this is good advice for anywhere in the world. Unless that hearse happens to be driven by the Ghostbusters, that is. The word for thumb in Japanese translates to mean “parent-finger”. Whereas in the Western world the middle finger gets all the love, here in Japan the thumb is the mother of all hand digits. Because it is known as the parent finger it is believe that should you not hide your thumb when a hearse passes by you your parent, it doesn’t specify which one, will soon die. Wow! Talk about the perfect crime! If you ever wanted to knock of pops to get some insurance money or maybe you are getting sick of mom’s meatloaf every night for the past seven months, go out hearse hunting with your thumb extended high. How does the thumb decide which parent lives or which parent dies or do each of our thumbs represent a different parent? You don’t want to accidentally knock off mom if you’re aiming for dad, is what I’m saying. These rules of thumb should be clearly outlined. Seriously, though, this is very much akin to the “step on a crack and you break your mother’s back” superstition. Placing your thumb into a fist is the best protection against the hearse parental death trap.


Mildred, The Shoes Are Making It Rain Again!
You’ve just purchased a new pair of Converse. They are nice Converse. You might even say their the perfect shoe for you. They mold to the contours of your fit as though these Converse were created for you and you alone. Then you step outside. It is raining. Rain falls onto your new Converse and now, according to the Japanese, you are cursed for life. It is said that if rain falls on a new pair of shoes each time you where those shoes it will be raining. People must be purchasing a shitload of shoes this month! I had always thought rain was caused by warm air transforming water from our rivers, lakes and oceans into vapor which rises into the air to form clouds containing drops of ice that fall to the earth once the cloud rises high enough that it becomes so heavy it has to release the vapor as snow or rain which then plummets downwards because of gravity. That or if you kill a spider. Or it’s Baby Jesus crying. Bah, shows you what I know. Rain is really caused by wet shoes, folks. I think I will purchase a new pair of shoes just to mess up the weatherman. “We don’t understand it. It was supposed to be sunny today? Did somebody put on new shoes?” Oh what power over the rain I will have. I will be known as Shoeperman! The man who can control the rain with a single step! For months the rain and I have done battle with each other but now, rain, I have figured out your secret. All I need is a cheap pair of loafers and you will be my slave.

Join us next time for more Japanese superstitions. Until then keep you head high and your shoes dry.