Lost In Translation

So today was a Japanese festival called tanabata. As it is celebrated here in Hokkaido, the festival involves children dressing up in costumes and then going door to door requesting candy. (Sound familiar?) Here in Hakodate these requests are made in the form of a cute little song, but in neighboring Sapporo I'm told that the lyrics are different, with children threatening to hurt you if you don't give them candy. All in all, upon hearing this explanation, I basically thought, "So this is Japanese Halloween," but a little googling has revealed that this is far from the truth. The holiday was imported from China and celebrates the meeting of two stars (Vega and Altair in Western astronomy), said to be two lovers doomed to be separated except for this one time a year. The way it is celebrated nowadays in Hokkaido is quite different from the rest of Japan and different even from the way it was celebrated in Hokkaido a generation ago. Apparently, it used to be that children requested not candy but candles for the family altar, but these days that is unusual.

As one would expect, the combination of small Japanese children and costumes produced much cuteness, though I was rather disappointed to see that most little boys don't bother with proper costumes--my host brother just went in his decidedly boring gym suit. The little girls wearing yukatas were the main source of cuteness for the evening, that and toddler Tomoya's difficulties in trying to walk and consume candy simultaneously--the concentration required to unwrap the sweets slowed him near to a standstill, sometimes right in the middle of the street, much to his mother's dismay.



Lamely uncostumed neighborhood boys examining their hauls. Please note the relative size of kids and candy bags. (Strictly speaking, it wasn't just candy-- squid flavored crackers, pocky, and other Japanese goodies were included.)


One mom was enlisted to help carry the excess...

Yukata clad girls and the ubiquitous "peesu."

Lost looking girl being completely, as Elliot would say, adorbs. Modern sneakers beneath her yukata.

Same little girl with her brother. Please note his power ranger themed yukata.

In addition to the beggar's night aspect, tanabata is celebrated by writing wishes on colored strips of paper and then hanging them on trees along with other decorations.

All in all it was quite a bit of fun and a welcome break from preparing for my midterm and the upcoming speech contest. That said, it made me more aware of my tendency to try to translate all things Japanese into something recognizably American. Upon hearing about the costumed candy-demanding children, I just tried to equate it with the familiar Halloween. As I progress in my Japanese language studies, I am increasingly learning words and expressions that just have no real equivalent in English, and the same can surely be said of cultural traditions.
That said, there are plenty of things that are direct imports. I watched a program recently which I am absolutely certain was the Japanese version of Mythbusters. In the episode I watched they were trying to recreate a movie stunt which was basically the vehicular equivalent of ski-jumping, but the effort failed miserably when the scale model took a total nose-dive. However, that program came directly after a game show that was definitely of the only-in-Japan variety, for much of the game show centered around the contestants' abilities to read and write obscure characters and to appropriately categorize English words. Much to my surprise and my host family's amusement, I found I had never heard some of the English before. Now, thanks to Japanese TV, I know what eldelweiss and Judas' ear are...