It actually starts with my mother Akiko's birthday on October 28, which is the fifth day of the Scorpio. In fact, everybody in the family is a Scorpio except me.
My older brother Ryo's birthday is on 11/4. My dad's, 11/5. My younger brother Yutaka's, 11/12.
It doesn't stop there. 11/12 is also the birthday of Ryo's wife, Naomi.
Yutaka's wife, Dawn, was born on 11/9.
***
Starting next year, we will be remembering 11/22 as the day Dad died.
11/22 was also the day our family first moved to the US in 1969 - or so says Ryo. I wouldn't know. I was literally in the womb at the time.
***
The Japanese are fond of coming up with goroawase, a form of word play that reads (in this case) a set of numbers as a phrase, and therefore adds another meaning.
Because the number "1" is read ichi, it can be shortened to i. The number "2" is usually read as ni, but when you count quantities, two of something is futatsu, which can be shortened to fu.
"11" is usually read juuichi to mean "eleven," but in goroawase can be read as ii. Similarly, "22" is usually read nijuuni to mean "twenty-two," but in word play can be read as fuufu.
Ii means "good" or "nice." Fuufu means "married couple."
Hence, the date 11/22 is known as ii fuufu no hi - Nice Married Couple's Day.
My parents were married on 11/10. They were married for 55 years.
My father fought hard to live, time and again over the last years of his life, but in the rare moments that he showed weakness, his primary concern was that Mom would be taken care of when he's gone.
My mother, in turn, despite her own difficulties, put on a brave face and hardly ever left his bedside, no matter where the hospital was.
At every hospital he was in, the nurses regarded their marriage as an ideal to strive for.
***
The Japanese are fond of coming up with goroawase, a form of word play that reads (in this case) a set of numbers as a phrase, and therefore adds another meaning.
Because the number "1" is read ichi, it can be shortened to i. The number "2" is usually read as ni, but when you count quantities, two of something is futatsu, which can be shortened to fu.
"11" is usually read juuichi to mean "eleven," but in goroawase can be read as ii. Similarly, "22" is usually read nijuuni to mean "twenty-two," but in word play can be read as fuufu.
Ii means "good" or "nice." Fuufu means "married couple."
Hence, the date 11/22 is known as ii fuufu no hi - Nice Married Couple's Day.
My parents were married on 11/10. They were married for 55 years.
My father fought hard to live, time and again over the last years of his life, but in the rare moments that he showed weakness, his primary concern was that Mom would be taken care of when he's gone.
My mother, in turn, despite her own difficulties, put on a brave face and hardly ever left his bedside, no matter where the hospital was.
At every hospital he was in, the nurses regarded their marriage as an ideal to strive for.
Ii fuufu, indeed.
By the way, I was born an Aquarius on 2/15. Black sheep? Perhaps.
My wife Shizuki was born a Cancer on 7/10.
I hope you will help celebrate my birthday, dear reader, because my wife won't.
***
A bit more goroawase.
2, 4, 6, 9, 11.
Does this sequence of numbers mean anything to you?
Think of the months of the year: February, April, June, September, November.
If you ever wanted to know the months that don't have 31 days, there you are.
The sequence is read in goroawase as nishi muku samurai.
The big mystery is samurai. Why is November "samurai"?
I admit to not having known this until recently, but there are several theories about this, the most plausible being that the kanji for juuichi is written 十一, which, if you write them vertically, looks like another kanji: 士. This kanji is the second kanji in bushi: 武士, which is another word for samurai (which, by the way, has its own kanji: 侍).
Dad was born, married, and died in the month of the samurai.
And after 40 years, almost exactly half of his life, of living in Southern California, he looked to the west, across the ocean, and chose Japan as his final resting place.
But that's another story.
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