Japanese Superstitions – A Continuing Series – Part 2

Do you have your Stevie cued up for round two? Alright, let’s begin.

Rice That Kills
Now this was a superstition I already knew of courtesy of my Lonely Planet guide. Of course, just because I read in the Lonely Planet guide, a few times I might add, doesn’t mean I’m not going to make the mistake and attract odd looks from old people over lunch. It is believed here that if you stick a set of chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice that it is not only bad luck but should you then proceed to eat that rice you so stupidly stuck your chopsticks into upright you will pass on, be no more, cease to be, expire and gone to meet your maker, you’d be a stiff, bereft of life, you’ll rest in peace, your metabolic processes would be history, you’d be off the twig, kicked the bucket, shuffled off your mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. In short, you’d be an ex-rice eater. The reasoning why this is such a cultural faux pas is that chopsticks are placed upright in rice here when a person dies. In essence, you are sealing your own fate, bub. I must have died a hundred times over. As an aside here it is also unlucky to pass food from chopstick to chopstick as this is how cremated bones are passed around at a funeral.

Go North, Young Man…No, Wait…DON’T!
While we are on the topic of death (so many of these are bloody morbid, ain’t they?), it is bad luck to sleep towards the North in Japan as bodies are laid out towards the North after death. Really, this has nothing to do with Feng Shui? Now, I’m no Magellan as my navigational skills since being up here have proved time and time again. How the hell am I supposed to know where North is. If this is really such a big deal the Japanese should be embedding compasses in their futons. I wonder how many people here adhere to this policy? Are the Japanese engrained with keen directional insight? What if you are sleeping and accidentally toss and turn your way towards the North? Are you now exonerated from all possible unluckiness? There has to be some crazy guy somewhere living in so much fear of this superstition that he straps himself into bed at night. He probably also straps down his cat.

The Spiders Must Be So Confused!
You are just waking up to a brand new day. The sun is shining. The garbage truck is singing. You step into the shower and brace yourself for the wash of wet soon to rain down upon you but before you turn on the facet you feel something else. There! On your foot! It’s a giant spider and it’s out for blood! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! In Japan should you kill this spider you will be the unhappy owner of a heaping batch of bad luck. Now, say you are just coming home from work. You head throbs from chasing around kids all day, you have a hole in your new pants and you crotch still aches from where you were punched in it by one of the little darlings you have to teach. You need a shower to wash off this day, warm water soothing you. You stand before the nozzle and brace yourself for the wash of wet soon to rain down upon you but before you turn on the facet you feel something else. There! On your foot! It’s a giant spider and it’s out for blood! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN, KILL IT! KILL IT! STOMP IT UNTIL SPIDER CORNERS WOULD NEE FANG RECORDS TO IDENTIFY THE BODY!!! What, you’re worried about bad luck? Well you need not worry no more! The second the sun sets it’s spider-hunting season in Japan and you could kill millions and you wouldn’t be an iota of unlucky. Hell, get this, you would actually become luckier! Yup, unlucky to kill a spider in the day but lucky to kill a spider at night. This has to really confuse the spider. Here he is crawling over your foot trying to escape thinking “Shit, Doug told me I shouldn’t be out in the daylight but damn if that crumb of whatever that is over there doesn’t look tasty. Damn my impatience!” and just as you brace yourself for the shower the spider braces itself for your foot and then it doesn’t come. The spider knows you saw it, there is no way it was missed, but still it is allowed to walk away unharmed. It senses change. The dawning of a new age. It goes to tell his brethren that the fears they have of man are now over. “The war is finished. Man has made peace with us. Tonight I will show you!” Later that night it walks up to the man while the others look on and it raises it’s leg in a gesture of peace. “Man, on behalf of spiders the world over I extend my leg in pe…” SMUSH! I really think this superstition was created to fuck with the spiders.

Badgers? Badgers? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING BADGERS!!!!
The western world has black cats and here in Japan they have badgers…evil, malicious badgers. This superstition actually reads “Avoid badgers”. Seriously, is there anybody out there actually seeking out badgers? The Japanese badger is considered to be a trickster due mainly because of the black around the eyes which is considered a mask. Raccoons, if you’re listening, stay the hell out of Japan! It is also believed badgers have the ability to transform into anything they want but not a machine. They can only form knives and stabbing weapons. (That’s from Terminator 2, you dopes) There is a popular folktale from where the badgers may have garnered their infamy. It is called The Badge and the Magic Fan. It tells of three goblin (or Tengu) children with noses that put Durante to shame. They carried with them magic fans able, with a single wave, to make their noses grow longer. Why they choose to make their noses larger I don’t know. These fans were an ancient form of Viagra! One day as they did their long nose fan dance they were observed by a badger. The badger shifted into a girl with a plate of sweet jam buns and offered them to the children. The children dropped their fans and greedily ate. The badger was sly and where there were three children there were four buns and he suggested the children close their eyes and hold their breath. Whomever could hold their breath the longest would be the victor and be honored with the last bun. With the children’s eyes closed and their breath held, the badger scooped up the fans and headed off for some mischief. At a nearing temple the badger found the daughter of the richest man in Japan. With a wave of the fan the badger made the poor girl’s nose grow to the size of the Sears Tower. She’s now a bridge in Northern Honshu. The father was devastated at the hideousness of his daughter and tried everything to cure her of her gigantic snoz. Nothing, not even a witch, could cure her. Finally he offered up half his fortune and his daughter’s hand in marriage to whomever could cure her. In came the badger to reveal himself as the catalyst to the entire calamity. He waved the fan and made the girl’s nose small once again and the father, not one to back out of a verbal contract with a badger, handed off his daughter to be wed. Fairytales never seem to have issue with inter-species erotica. A big wedding party was held and the badger gasped at his good fortune. Rich and with a beautiful human bride, the badger fell into a deep, satisfied sleep. While he slept the goblin children took back their fans and as punishment made the badger’s nose so long that it vanished into the clouds above. Above two angels were building a bridge to heaven and when they saw the badger’s nose they thought it would be perfect for the job. The hoisted the badger up through the clouds and the beast was never heard from again. And now in modern day Japan it is still believed that badgers of all nose size are shape-shifting tricksters causing mischief and mayhem wherever they go.

Magical Stress Removing Palm Text!
Every country has their version of hooky medicine that is supposed to work wonders on you but really is designed to work wonders on your wallet. There is a pill for everything. Turn on some late night television and gaze upon the horseshit they are trying to sell you to make you look young, to remove your arthritis pain, to make you more virile or to make you lose weight. Japan has its own herbs and pills and teas to cure what ails you but nothing is as strange as the false swallowing of palm text. A cure for nervousness and stress here has the sufferer (and if they are doing they probably have some other mental issues they should be, errr, swallowing) write the word ningen on their palm three times. Ningen means human beings. You are then supposed to pretend to swallow the words you’ve written and soon you will be relaxed and stress free. I’m a bit confused here…like the spiders. Is this only to ward off stress and nervousness caused by humans? I mean, what if you worry about earthquakes or pumpkins? Would you get the same results by writing “I’m worried that if the Big Bang created the universe and if since then we have always been expanding and that if the theories of the Big Crunch are correct then one day the universe will snap back in on itself and everything we have ever known will start to run backwards and if that happens people will see that I’m wearing dirty underwear” three times on your palm and then pretend to gulp it on down? Do doctors prescribe this or can you get whatever medicated Sharpie you need to produce your stress removing palm text over the counter? Actually, a better question would be: If I wrote Lindsey Lohan on my palm three times and pretended to swallow the words would she go away?

Until next time always face north and watch out for long nosed badgers!