Small Note!

I'm clearing out my notebook so that I don't lose relevant information amidst a ton of already passed events.

One thing I scribbled a note about that I thought was interesting:

American children sometimes have problems with "b" and "d" and tend to flip one or the other backwards when they write. Japanese JHS kids have much the same problem.

Additionally, Japanese children are notorious for writing the hiragana character "く" (ku) backwards.

A small tidbit of interesting food for thought!

Superstitions

Recently I entertained an adult English class with some common misconceptions in America (like shaving affecting hair growth, touching a baby bird putting your smell on it and making the mother abandon it) and they in turn shared with me some interesting beliefs they held or had heard of, such as:

- Punching your pillow the number of times as the hour you want to wake up at in the morning. For 6:30 you punch the pillow 6 times, then punch it once softly for the half hour mark.

- Don't sleep in the bed with your head facing North. It's how people are buried, so it's something to avoid. Alternatively, a Japanese friend who wasn't in the class was told by her aunt that sleeping with her head to the North would make her smarter.

- Spread salt and put salt on yourself after a funeral as part of purification and to ward off evil.

We also discussed America's divorce rate and I mentioned that I thought money was one of the biggest causes of stress in new and old marriages. One gentleman shared with me the saying, "Money nothing, connection nothing."