Takayuki and Luck

So last night I had a class with one of my favourite students. His name is Takayuki, and he's about 45 years old, a husband and father.

I like Takayuki so much because he's so very happy all the time. He loves to laugh and make jokes and he's just an easy-going guy. Also, he recently got 'levelled up' (he is making progress with his english) and I was the lucky sensei to give him his Level Up Slip!!! I almost had a tear.

The lesson I chose for him last night was on Superstitions. I just wanted to talk a little about it because the things he told me were very interesting.

Now i'm not sure if you know this, but in Japan luck is very important. There are many lucky and unlucky things and Takayuki said probably 99% of the Japanese believe in luck, for real. The main way this is explained is that every January 1st all the Japanese go to the shrine and pray and then buy a little good luck charm that they carry around everywhere with them for the year. At the end of the year, the burn them. Pretty crazy when you think about it.

Also, another interesting thing he said was a little phenomenon called chabashira. This is when a tea leaf is found vertical in your tea...it brings good luck.

If you didn't know, the Japanese have four leaf clovers all over, you can get anything with a four leaf clover on it.

They also believe the colours black and white are unlucky because they represent death. For example, you would never give a wedding or baby shower gift that is just black and white.

Those are a few of the lucky traditions they have in Japan. Oh and I also wanted to mention that the numbers 4 and 9 are very unlucky here. Four is 'chi' which means death and Takayuki couldn't explain why 9 was unlucky to me...it's too hard to explain I guess. It's crazy though, at Nova we have 5 rooms for classes on the main level of our branch. Never has anyone ever taught in room 4, ever. They just don't use it!!

The last thing that I wanted to share about that class doesn't have anything to do with luck at all, but I just think it's cute.

So in the listening exercise I used the term 'stuff'. For example: 'You really believe in that stuff?', stuff meaning superstitions. Anyway...Takayuki didn't know what 'stuff' meant. And before I started explaining, he said, does it mean 'jinx'?

I was like...what? First I was shocked he knew what jinx was and then in my head I was like...what does that really mean anyway, and then of course it was funny because it doesn't mean anything close to jinx.

But then I said to him, 'uhhhhh...what does jinx mean??' I don't know, I just thought jinx was kinda inexplainable...like what do you think it means?

And then he gave the perfect answer, that I never could have come up with. He just said it meant that if he says something, it will happen. And I was like ahhhh yeah...

And then I explained what stuff was to him and he laughed and laughed at how he thought it meant jinx.

Hahaha...oh Takayuki.