Paris Coffee is a cafe just off Dougenzaka in Shibuya, not far from the Hachiko crossing. It’s fairly cheap, considering it serves fancy-looking coffee from actual, named countries. A coffee will set you back around 450 to 550 yen, while a scone is less than 300 yen. A good choice suitable for those who appreciate a pleasant atmosphere, but can’t be bothered to make reservations for a butler cafe.
The above photo doesn’t show my drink, by the way. I got a “Rose Marry” and when it arrived, cream rose swirl on the top, pink brandy glistening on the petals, HUNDREDS-AND-THOUSANDS, I got excited and… *splodge* The drink suddenly wasn’t so photogenic. That sound effect was my hand squashing the rose just as I caught the glass when it fell off the coaster, by the way. Pervert.
You can find a map in English here. There are photos of the shop front below.
It’s revealing that while American ads use the telephone keypad to spell out letters to help you remember that number, Japanese ads use whole sentences.
Numbers are easy to convert into words and then sentences in Japanese. Everyone knows the one about ‘4′ being pronounced shi, which means death, right? But you can also convert longer words. For example, yaoi can be rendered as 801.
That’s not to say English doesn’t do it too (or should that be ‘doesn’t do it 2′?), but Japanese makes it easier because it has a limited number of syllables to work with, and so there is an increased chance that a single sound in the language will be a complete word. Also, we’re playing with two different languages and writing systems here.
So, having said that, today is August 8th. Two eights in a row. In order to make sense of it, I consulted a site called Every Day Is A Holiday (Japanese).
| Abacus Day/Soroban no Hi | When you count using an abacus, it makes a sound a bit like pachi pachi, which is a play on the repeated pronunciation of ‘8′ in Japanese. |
| Moustache Day/Hige no Hi | The kanji for eight, 「八」, looks like a moustache. |
| Calabash Day/Hyoutan no Hi | The number ‘8′ looks like a calabash, or gourd. |
| Octopus Day/Tako no Hi | Because octopodes have eight legs! That one was easy… |
| Laughter Day/Warai no Hi | Haha is the sound of laughter and also a way to pronounce two eights in a row. There are a lot of ways to read ‘8′ in Japanese. |
| Respect For Parents Day/Oyakoukou no Hi | It’s a bit of a stretch, but hachi (8) hachi (8) can be lined up and rearranged to make haha and chichi, which mean ‘mother’ and ‘father’. |
| Fermented Food PR Day/Hakkou Shokuhin no Hi | Celebrate food like natto and cheese on this day dedicated to promoting foods that undergo fermentation. If you’ve figured out the pattern by now, the reference to the number ‘8′ is hidden in ‘hakkou’. |
| Papaya Day/Papaiya no Hi | The two eights are hidden in the first two syllables of ‘papaya’. |
| Fruit Day/Kudamono no Hi | The eighth day of every month is Fruit Day! It promotes fruit as a snack, which is oYATSU in Japanese. |
| Teeth Day/Ha no Hi | Last one, I promise. This also falls on the eighth day of every month and is for promoting healthy teeth. Tooth/teeth in Japanese is ‘ha’. |
Did you get through all of that? There are many more besides the ones I’ve listed here. It’s worth noting that all of these days have wildly varying amounts of attention paid to them…! If this was interesting to you, try a more cynical take on learning Japanese in my post titled Six Reasons Why Kanji Are Unnecessary.
