Japanese Cultural Trivia of the Day:

So yesterday was Hina Matsuri in Japan.

Hina Matsuri, is referred to as both "Doll Festival" or "Girl's Day" in English, and no, not because of any sexist business about girls liking dolls. The festival is held to pray/hope for the healthy and happy upbringing of female children, and the dolls represent the Japanese Imperial Court, in traditional Heian dress.

The dolls are believed to be able to contain bad spirits, which leads us to today's bit of trivia.

Today many younger Japanese families don't keep up with this practice. About half of the female students in my classes report that their households don't set up the dolls. A handful find the dolls themselves creepy and weird.

But the families who do still have a set of dolls that they display, usually keep one set year round, putting them out for the festival, and taking them down soon after.

The original tradition, still practiced widely, is called "hina-nagashi," in which straw dolls were placed on a boat and set afloat on a river, carrying the bad spirits away with them. In modern cases where putting a bunch of straw and wood in a publicly or commercially used river is not a good idea, some shrines send the dolls out to sea, collect them, bring them back in, and burn them.

I suspect that the families who re-use the often expensive dolls instead of burning them or sending them away, hope that a year in the closet between use will give them time to digest the "troubles" that they are supposed to absorb. But the knowledge that you're NOT supposed to keep them around may live on in a popular superstition. It's one that I just learned about this year, and it inspired the entire post: If you don't put away your Hina Dolls in a timely manner, you won't be able to marry off your daughters!

The origins of this superstition seem pretty old, but from what I've found online, it seems like they have their roots in two places. The first is just what I said above. Moving your troubles into the dolls doesn't help you any if you keep them around after. The second is more interesting for fans of words.

It's kind of a play on the multiple meanings of the word 片付く(かたづく； katazuku), which can made into the transitive verb 片付ける、meaning "to clean up," or "put in order" which is what you have to do to the dolls. But it can also mean "to be married off," which is what you can do with your daughters, if you clean up the dolls on time!

「雛人形を早く片付けるほど娘が早く実家から片付く！」

表現 Break: 三日三月三年

みっか　みつき　さんねん
mikka mitsuki sannen

(This can be alternatively written/pronounced as:
三日三ヶ月三年
みっか　みかげつ　さんねん
mikka mikagetsu sannen

Three is an important number in the Japanese collective consciousness. Oh you'll hear a lot about numbers like 4 and 9 as harbingers of suffering and death, or 8s representing bounty... but 3s are where it's at in terms of demonstrating resolve.

What do I mean by this? Let's take a look at some Japanese expressions and Japanese cultural practices that all involve threes.

Three is the magic number for gift giving at weddings: 30000円 is the traditional amount for a present, and if you choose to give gifts like dinner ware, or bath towels, or anything domestic, you should always give them in groups of odd numbers, like 3 or 5, with 3 being the standard. While I imagine that in the states, couples gifts in groups of 2, or even family starter gifts in groups of 4. In Japan, however, the idea is that even numbers can be evenly divided and are not appropriate for weddings, which should be about lasting bonds. A group of three (man, woman, and child perhaps?) can not part ways so easily.

And there's another marriage tradition with threes that I learned about recently. It's common, still today, for a suitor to be turned down by the bride's father three times before receiving consent.

This ties in with the general idea that Japanese people will say "No" thrice before accepting things. When you offer to pay for a meal, (or even just for your portion of a meal) Japanese people will often refuse. If you do want to pay, try offering more than four times. They might just be being polite.

On the same theme of persistence, remember 三日坊主? Three days is the make or break point. Someone who's sticking with it after three days is probably not going to give up.

So take the 三日 from 三日坊主, as the period required to see what a trade, hobby, or regular practice requires, and we can start to work on the meaning of today's phrase.

Definition:
Watch for three days, learn for three months, practice for three years.

Sorry for the lack of a definition in Japanese, but definitions seem to vary. A man who gave me a lift through Shimane-ken explained that this was the way that you become an expert at something, the way you make it your own.

Some sources on the web equate this expression to the　ことわざ 「石の上にも三年」, which involves enduring boredom and suffering to achieve greater results. Notice how that takes three years too?

Do you know any other Japanese expressions or customs involving threes?

相思相愛

そうし　そうあい
soushi souai

It's Spring Time in Japan, the time of year when a young man's fancy turns to love, and when those of you are living in Japan, might be getting invited to tons of weddings. If so, prepare yourself to hear this yo-ji-juku-go.

Definition:
男女が互いに恋いしあい、愛し合うこと。非常にむつまじい男女の仲。
Translations:
1. The pinnacle of love
2. Deep mutual love
3. Frenzied, passionate love
4. True love

Today's example sentence is a wedding party toast. I'm gonna try to remember this one, in case anybody asks me to talk at my friend Nacho's wedding, though odds are pretty low it would be appropriate for me to say it. That honor would typically go to the 晩酌人、and where we would say 'toast,' the Japanese would call it the 晩酌人挨拶.

例文:　相思相愛のもとに結ばれ、いま幸せの絶頂におりますご両名ではございますが…
Joined by the bonds of a true and immutable love, may the both of you remain, as you are now, at the pinnacle of happiness.