In Japanese there are lots of set phrases, I don’t mean like set phrases in English such as “take a bath” or “make a promise”. I mean that in certain situations people always say the same thing. I guess they are a kind of tradition.

There are examples everywhere, when it is time to eat a meal people will say いただきます (itadakimasu) and upon finishing will utter ごちそうさまでした (gochisousama deshita). The translations for these expressions are hard to pin down, if you do it literally they are “I humbly receive” and “It was a feast” respectively but that does not make too much sense in English.

Usually when I come across them on TV shows they are translated to “Let’s eat” and “Thanks for the food”. I’m not sure if this sums up their meaning exactly (especially with the first) but it’s close enough for me, especially as they aren’t really any English equivalents, unless you count saying Grace.

Such phrases are also used when leaving or entering the home. When someone leaves to nip to the shops or go to work they will say いってきます (ittekimasu) and whoever is left says いってらっしゃい (itterasshai). When returning to the house people will say ただいま (tadaima), which is responded with a おかえりなさい (okaerinasai) by the people within.

Again when you translate the phrases literally they some a bit strange. The Leaving the House Set become “I’ll go and come back” and “Please go and come back”, while the Returning Set are “Just now” and “You have returned”.

Like with the eating phrases there are no set expressions that the English say in these situations, so you have to be a bit creative when translating them properly. I guess it is best to go for “I’m off” / “Have a good time” when going and “I’m back” / “Welcome home” when returning.

The reason that I am telling you about these now is that living in my flat in Japan, with two friends, I have never had any compulsion to say these things. And why should I? I’m English after all, as are they (kinda), and we should pride ourselves on being able to come up with suitable different greetings depending on the situation.

However now that I’m spending a month on holiday, staying with my family in both England and Colombia, I’ve suddenly found myself saying these things when leaving and entering the home. In a family environment it just feels right for me to say them. To tell you the truth it is freaking me out a bit. No one else in my family knows any Japanese, I think my Dad knows “Arigatou” but I’m not actually sure he knows what it means, so it is a bit weird that I have the desire to say them.

It is strange that this piece of Japanese culture, one that I’m not overly familiar with as I don’t live in Japanese family homes very often, has seeped into me. I wonder if I will continue to say it once I’m back in Japan and also what other Japanese mannerisms have flowed into me, just waiting for their moment to surface.

As I returned to England for the summer, after an absence of about two years, look who is greeting me at the doorway of my house, beckoning me in….

This little fellow is a Maneki Neko (招き猫) or Beckoning Cat. He has many names though, I prefer the name Fortune Cat, and how he came to live in a house in England is not your usual story of jumping into a suitcase on the way home from Japan.

Maneki Nekos are often found in shops or restaurants and they beckon the customer in with their upright paw. This gesture may look a little like a wave but in Japan the signal to call someone over is to hold out your hand, palm down and repeatedly folding the fingers down and back up. Almost the opposite of the English way of doing it. They wear a little bell and a bib around their neck. I’m not sure of the significance but apparently it was common for cat to wear this attire back in the Edo period, perhaps the bell performed the same function as it does these days, to warn birds of incoming cat death.

These cats also commonly hold a coin, these coins are know as koban (小判) which were used in Edo period Japan. The value written on the coin is 10,000,0000 ryo (千万両), which as you can guess is a lot of money. An impossible amount in fact. Maybe it is not even supposed to be a quantifiable amount, the first two characters on the coin can be read senban (千万) means ‘very much’ or ‘a great many’. The value on the coins may simply be trying to infer Loadsamoney. This coin ties in with the idea that having a Maneki Neko in your shop will bring with it a large fortune and wealth.

Also related to money, these cats are often used by children as piggy banks. The piggy link does not end there though, the Japanese version of the idiom “pearls before swine” is “coins to cats” (猫に小判 neko ni koban).

The Maneki Neko living in my house is not Japanese at all but instead originated from Colombia.

When I visited Colombia as a youngster we would always get our photos developed at Foto Japon, the elite problem solvers amongst you will no doubt have worked out this means Photo Japan in Spanish. At that time their little mascot was a Maneki Neko holding their logo rather than a coin. I fell in love with it instantly and begged my mum to buy one. It turned out that they did indeed sell them but our usual shop was sold out.

All around Bogotá we went looking for one of these cats, my poor mother being dragged to any shop we happened to pass. Unfortunately the cat was nowhere to be found and I was left disappointed.

That was until we went food shopping a week later and in the mini Foto Japon in the supermarket was a lucky cat just staring at me. It was a proper one too, not one with the company logo on it. I was so happy.

Looking back, I don’t think that my need for a neko was driven by some sort of burgeoning love for Japan but I had recently played through Legend of Mystical Ninja on my N64, a game where you had to collect these lucky cat dolls. Maybe I just wanted to be like Goemon, the hero of the game.

In the years since then I have not amassed any fortune or wealth but my photos always come out really well. Maybe the origin of my Maneki Neko explains this.

So 6 weeks later then……

Well, I never found the time to write anything here during my time working for Embassy, mainly because I have very little access to the net and I spent my time either teaching, planning lessons or working. When I wasn’t doing any of that I was sleeping, its been the first time in about 4 years that I have had to take mid-afternoon kips due to exhaustion. Still it was a good experience and I am happy I did it (the work, not the sleep).

The worst thing about the Runnymede experience was the food. Having been subjected to that slop for so long was really disheartening. So I was really looking forward to being able to cook up some of my favourite culinary delights, however I was greeted with this scene when I got home:

The bloody cooker is gone.

So now I have to eat crappy TV dinners until my dad gets around to ordering a new one.

Many people say that the school/university days will be the best time in your life, well I can safely say that I am past that now and only have misery and sadness to look forward to, or something. About a week ago, I finally finished my University adventure and moved back home. In this past week I meant to do many things, very few of them actually got done. I did manage to delete some very important files from my Dad’s computer though, which was clever.

One of the things I had intended to do was tidy up this site a bit (like getting rid of that default about me page). Well that will have to wait for another day because tomorrow I start a job teaching English in Runnymede. This will take place over the summer and hopefully give me a good bit of teaching practice so I can hone (remember) my English teaching skills before I go to Japan.

Expect the next update I post to be a riveting report on what I have been up to there and the crazy stuff I have been getting up to.