Superstitions and Earthquakes

Ok, because work today was so interesting, I'm writing two entries for one day.

My last class today was a voice class, so we talked about superstitions. I tried testing them on common Western superstitions and one or two of them had heard most of the superstitions before. So I asked them to tell me some Japanese superstitions, which turned out to be really interesting.

1. When children lose their milk teeth, they throw their bottom-row teeth over the roof of the house, and their top-row teeth, throw them under the house. This is to help the new teeth grow strong upwards (to the roof) and downwards (to the ground). :| I thought this was pretty funny! I asked them if it happens now and they said because there are so many apartments, it wouldn't be good to throw teeth over the roof just in case it didn't make it.

2. Whistling at night brings bad luck. They said this is a good way to teach children to be quiet at night.

3. (I knew this one already) If you sneeze, someone must be talking about you. Apparently one sneeze means someone is saying something bad. Two sneezes means someone is saying something nice!

4. When you see a hearse, you must hide your thumbs otherwise you can't see your parents just before they pass away. That was a weird one.

5. Cutting your nails at night is bad luck. Its got something to do with cutting nails in the dark being dangerous, maybe.

6. When you hear thunder, you must hide your belly button because the thunder might take it away. So the act of putting your hand on your stomach is to kind of warm you up, as thunder indicates it might be getting cold outside...

So that was cool, I probably learnt more in that voice class than they did :).

The class before I had three students. One of them was named Saeko. If you can get this, when I said her name for the first time in the class, I almost started laughing; I had to keep a straight face or there would be some heavy explaining.

AND!!!!!

Today was the first time in my life I've experienced an earthquake! It was awesome!!! It was a little one though, as I found out from my voice students after it happened. I was sitting in the teachers' room when the room started shaking very strangely and the walls started making some noise. It only lasted maybe about 5 seconds, and after that some really small tremors could be felt. And Olivia, if you do read this, it did feel a bit like fainting!! I was so excited that that was what we talked about for 40 minutes in voice next. I also found out that the Tokai region (around Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, and quite near Yokohama) there is supposed to be a massive earthquake (Magnitude 8, and shaking level 7, which is the strongest, no Richter scale here) every 150 years. The last time it happened was in 1853, so guess what? Some of my students told me to be prepared...as if I can be prepared?! And I also found out the last time Mt. Fuji erupted was in 1707, but there's no cyclical activity with Mt. Fuji I think. But an earthquake might be able to wake it up, although that's one of the last things I want to happen while I am here. All the same, I'm pretty excited about experiencing my first earthquake ever. We started talking about fault lines and cracks and plate tectonics (although I didn't use that term...too much explaining to follow). Japan is sitting very close to a fault line, but apparently most earthquakes are caused by many cracks already in the plate, rather than plates rubbing against each other. Anyway, enough earthquake education. My anticipated worst day (Tuesday is the worst coz I finish at 9) ended up being quite a good day! :) Out.