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.
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.
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