The Deadly Four

   I visited gran'ma in the hospital the other day and confirmed what I had often heard: there aren't any 4s in Japanese hospitals.

   Some people may claim that the Japanese are superstitious, pointing out that the number (四, shi) sounds like death (死, shi) in Japanese. Incidentally, the same is true in Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, countries which like Japan had incorporated this tetraphobia along with the Chinese writing and numerical system well over a millenia ago. No, I think the omission of "four" in hospitals today is influenced more by a desire to avoid upsetting or discomfitting patients than superstitious claptrap.

   While I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago, I noticed that our fourteenth floor condominium was actually on the thirteenth floor. When I pointed this out to my wife, a wild-eyed man riding in the elevator with us said it was because the building had been built by Freemasons. It was the first time I'd heard that and have since Googled it to see if there's anything to it. (There is and there isn't.) At any rate, I'm still not convinced. Most likely, the developer didn't want to take any chances that there might be triskaidekaphobes among his future clients. Why make things hard for yourself?

Bon - 2

   In an hour or so, I will be risking life and limb, and very possibly the immortality of my soul. I will, in other words, be spending the afternoon at the sea during o-Bon, Japan’s Buddhist festival of the dead. Call me reckless. Call me a fool, but I just can’t bear to let a sunny day like this go to waste, even if it is on the first day of the Bon, a day when Japanese superstition warns us that the lid of hell’s cauldron has been thrown open and evil spirits will drag you down to the Netherworld (地獄の釜の蓋が開いていて連れて行かれるから、お盆に海に入っちゃいけない: jigoku no kama no futa ga aitite, tsurete ikareru kara, o-Bon ni umi ni haccha ikenai). 

   I have written about this before, but during, and particularly after, the Bon festival, the beaches grow depressingly quiet. There are fewer people playing in the sand, even fewer in the water. Superstition plays a part in the desolation, but so do the jellyfish, which always manage to time their unwelcomed arrival in mid August. Just walking along the waterline can mean risking getting stung by a half-dead jellyfish that has washed to shore. I imagine that’s where the superstition originally comes from: not the threat of being pulled down to Hell, but to being stung by a jellyfish.

   So as to not tempt fate, the only water I’ll be getting near this afternoon is the chaser I’ll have with my rum.