Three Ages of Japanese Man

[steepholm]

Three factoids I picked up from three different conversations with my Japanese friends on italki.com this week.

Birth

When Japanese women give birth, it is customary for the hospital to take the umbilical cord and put it in a little box. The mother is then presented with it as a memento on leaving the hospital.

Childhood

There is a kami who specialises in straightening out badly behaved children. His twisted staffs symbolise the crooked behaviour of the children he has to deal with, usually as a result of a prayer of the parents.



Also, he gets to ride on a fox.

Man's Estate

Whenever a train is late and it is deemed to be the driver's fault, the driver is made to write a letter of apology to the customers. However, whenever a Japanese salaryman feels that it's all too much and throws himself in the path of a speeding shinkansen (as happens all too often), the family is made to pay a large amount of compensation to the train company - pour encourager les autres, presumably.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Presumably also to pay the pension of a driver who is unlikely to be able to drive again.

I know that UK railways have a special set up for this eventuality.

[steepholm]

Japanese companies are famously paternalistic: I doubt that the driver would be left to starve in any case.