Thursday, June 2, 2016

Some days are just plain lucky

Special days are carefully chosen. And avoided...
Starting a business, buying a home, opening a store and obviously getting married are all serious issues which should never be taken lightly, especially when you might suffer the misfortune of choosing an unlucky day for the big occasion. But in Japan you may enjoy luxury of knowing this in advance. Somedays are lucky, and some simply are not. But a quick search on-line will help you out. Indeed, most printed calendars and even computer schedules will actually have them included. In Japan, the good and the bad are labelled in advance, for your convenience.

The maneki-neko; a bringer of good luck
Some days are lucky in the morning and some in the afternoon; some provide good luck all day and others the reverse. And Tomobiki boasts excellent luck all day except for noon; when it's awful. And given that "midnight" is generically used to refer simply when it's dark, noon is probably trickier to catch than it would appear at first sight and it's really no surprise to find it actually covers a full two hour period rather than a moment in time.

And so people will plan their special day around a calendar dating back to the early eras of Monkey and his friends of magic. I'll relocate half the office the morning of one day and the other half the afternoon of another just to avoid the problems that may ensue. And then of course, the conundrum that concerns me most is which noon exactly do we refer too? Tokyo Time or Greenwich Mean Time? Or any other for that matter. So good luck, or break a leg, whichever black cat you would prefer to throw over your shoulder whilst you pick up that penny. Life was so easy in the days before the first train pulled away from Shimbashi Station.



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