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！」

2級 Grammar 51-55

Today's grammar sentences are brought to you by an event of BIBLICAL proportions: the 大掃除 of Brett's apartment, and man was THAT overdue. Check the examples to get an idea of the kinds of shenanigans that this involved.

51) ～ざるをえない
~ have to
~must

This is the same as しなければならない, with the nuance that the action that must be performed is something that you don't want to do. It's good to think of this one as "しないわけにはいかない: not doing it is not an option."　

~ざるをえない replaces the ない in the negative plain form of verbs.

Ex. Macaroniの箱四個を捨てたくなかったけど、賞味期限が1998年に切れていたので、捨てざるをえなかった。

52) ～しかない
- is the only thing (to do)

しか was a revelation for me when I first learned it, cause it's so easy and so useful. Just put しか in front of a negative verb, and you've turned it into a positive sentence with the added meaning of "only."

How many people came to your party? 二人しか来なかった。Only two.
Can you speak English? 日本語しか喋れない。

This 2級 grammar point adds the fun of VERB + しかない, meaning VERB is the only thing to do (That's true by the way. It is.)

Ex. 3-4年間かかっても、掃除するしかない。引越しすることが出来ないし。

53) ～次第
~ after
~once X is done

Used commonly to ask someone to do something, after something else, and used most with verbs of conclusion. After something is finished (concluded, decided, etc), please do etc.

Check the comments below for an important point on using 次第. And some weird discussion.

Ex. やー、ブレット！掃除が終わり次第、あなたの孫によろしく、ね。


54) ～次第で（は）・～次第だ
~ depending on

I've been waiting for so, SO long to learn how to say "depending on" in Japanese. Don't know why I didn't just ask somebody.　で is attached when you use it to say "Depending on X..." and continue the sentence from there. だ is attached when you end the sentence with "... depends on X."

Ex. 掃除が終わる時の体調次第で、パーティをするかもしれないし、休むかもしれないし、死ぬかもしれません。

55) ～上・上は
～的に
～の点で
～の面で
～に関係することで
~ in relation to
~ concerned with
~ regarding

This one is a bit tricky. It's used to pinpoint the essence or the target of something, in an explanatory fashion. Like:
"They've had a lot of problems related to money: あの二人の間には、金銭上のトラブルがあったようだ。"
or
"He quit for reasons related to health：健康上の理由で止めた."

Ex. 彼女がいること上、アパートを掃除したくなったのかな?

And with that, I've taken care of my both my weekly grammar and my weekly give-Brett-a-hard-time quotas! Wooooot.

Post script:
Google Images let me down. I couldn't find any pictures of the fridge from Minority Report.

Also, here's a sample of real dialogue from the 掃除 session:

"Ow!"
"What?"
"I just cut myself on something in this cabinet."
"Is it bad?"
"No... but this place is like the inside of a Komodo Dragon's mouth. Even if the wound isn't deep, the ancient bacteria are gonna kill me."