Author Archives: Ryusuke Kondo

New Year’s Greeting Letter

Nationality: Japan
Age: 28
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

This is a very common Japanese tradition that people send greeting cards to everyone they know on new year. This is the way to thank others and try to keep their relationship longer. Some people do not contact at all but they still send greeting cards to update what is going on in that family or person. usually they put pictures of themselves or pictures of Chinese zodiac signs such as pictures of dragon, and rabbit.

On the other hand, if one of relatives die, they do not send greetings next year, instead they send grieving cards to notify their close relatives recently die. But  they still send cards little earlier than new year so that others won’t send them greeting cards. sending greeting to some who lost their relatives is considered to be bad, so they need to let others know that they can not receive any greetings.

 

Ohanami (Celebration of spring)

Nationality: japan
Age: 2o
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

Ohanami is a fun event to celebrate the spring. People go out, eat and drink while watching cherry blossom.

Cherry blossom blooms only in spring for a week, so a lot of people go out to parks or mountains to celebrate the spring coming. By doing so, Japanese people fully realize the change of seasons and they start ready for summer. Traditionally, this celebration includes the hope for the seeds growing successfully, and thank for the god. When they eat, they also thank for the food came from last year’s cropping season, so this is the celebration of past, future, and present.

Also, on that day of celebration, it is traditional to eat a rice cake folded by the leaf of cherry blossom. Rice represents the good result of harvest last year.

Beer Bubbles

Nationality: Japan
Age: 28
Occupation: Student
Residence: los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: japanese

Japanese people really cares about the bubbles of beers. Almost they like to drink more bubbles than liquid of beer. Japanese beer is very bubbly and usually the ratio of bubbles and beer is 3:7. All restaurants and bars follow this rule even though such as rule does not exist. But it is hard to create bubbles when pouring the beer into the glass at home. Therefore beer companies sell beer bubble maker to households to enjoy their beer experience at home. it is unsure that Japanese people care about beer bubbles so much but according to the informant, tasty bubbles indicate the freshness of beer. 

Virus Game

Nationality: Japan
Age: 28
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

An informant played this game with her friends when she was in the primary school in Japan.

There is no starting point of this game, someone needs to suddenly in order to play.

If a starter physically contacts with another person (any parts of his body is fine), the game starts.

A starter who accidentally touched another gets his/her virus from contacted person, therefore the starter needs to infect others by touching.

If kid’s name whom the starter got virus from is Ken, the starter has to scream “I’ve got Ken’s virus! “. Then the starter needs to touch others. Next, if the starter’s name is Taka, next person shouts “I’ve got Taka’s virus” and passes on the virus to others.

Sometimes, the name of the virus does not change. So if the game starts from Ken’s virus, his name still remains. The game won’t stop until someone got bored or the teacher stops to do so.

Unfortunately, this is used often to tease someone who is not popular in the class in order to humiliate.

Rest Room Pictures

Nationality: Japan
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

The informant has seen this game among Japanese middle school students when she was in Japan.

This is the game widely played by male students in middle to high school. Males students, usually a group of three to four, wait outside of the restroom until someone goes in and takes a photo of person urinating or sometimes evacuating the bowels. Taking pictures of evacuating the bowels is harder because the photographer needs to climb up the wall of the room without someone realizing. After taking that picture, they show it to that person who was in the picture, and ask for buy something such as candies and cakes. If they agree to buy something the pictures are deleted. But sometimes they keep pictures to remain powerful in the class.

The only rule that they follow is that these pictures won’t be shown to girls, only shown to guys. Therefore, people who got taken pictures do not really feel teased because they always pay back by taking pictures.  In this game, a camera in the mobile phone is used. Sometimes this is also a way that the student shows off his better quality of the phone to others.