So yeah, there was an earthquake around noon today which in itself is no big deal. It was a bit different from the usual one in that it was very short and abrupt and you couldn't hear it coming at all. That's one thing I've noticed about earthquakes in the movies; the characters seem to notice furniture shaking or liquids moving in glasses first when really most of the time you notice the sound first - it's similar to the sound of a truck going by your house. It's much rarer for things to start shaking without warning and it usually means that the earthquake's epicenter is very close... Or apparently it could also mean that a nearby country has performed an underground nuclear test... Yikes, I can't believe that we felt it even though we're so far away from North Korea! Though luckily the tremor lasted less than a second. The teachers at my school thought it seemed like a strange earthquake and so they turned on the TV to check the information about it (usually they only turn on the TV to check the magnitude and to see if there are any warnings and whatnot if it's a pretty big or long-lasting one). On TV we saw a map of North Korea with a red X marking the calculated epicenter and at first I was like, "Wow, an earthquake in North Korea is pretty rare!" - hey, I never said that I was smart - but I saw the story on BBC news a short time after that.
But anyway, what I really wanted to talk about for this post is Cat's Cradle (well I guess technically "string figures") though I always call those kinds of string figures "Cat's Cradle" even if I'm not playing the actual game with someone else. I've noticed that in Japan Cat's Cradle seems to be played equally amongst girls and boys (while back in the US it's considered more of a girl activity - though technically my dad's the one who taught me how to play - he grew up with three sisters).
The fifth graders at my various elementary schools are wrapping up the "What's this?" chapter in their textbooks so I thought I should give them some practice with that and also teach them the very important phrase, "I don't know." So I decided to bring in a string and show them some Cat's Cradle patterns; basically I would show them a pattern and say, "What's this in English?" and they would try to answer with, "It's a ~." or "I don't know."
I started with the cup and saucer and at first the students answered, "杯 (sakazuki)" which means "sake cup" but when I asked for the word in English a bunch of them did say "cup" since they learned that word recently. The cup-and-saucer can be transformed into the Eiffel Tower by holding an end of the string with your teeth. When I asked the class about that they said, "Tokyo Tower!" I told them that in the US we call it the Eiffel Tower and also had them guess which country that structure is in.
Next I showed them the witches' broom but none of the students knew how to say "broom" in English so I had them practice, "I don't know!" In Japanese it's called "箒 (houki)". When I was little my dad showed me that if you carefully remove your fingers from the bristle-end of the witches' broom you're left with four loops. Next you tell a friend to "Pick a banana," and when your friend pulls one of the loops the whole thing comes apart so you say, "You ate them all!" The elementary kids had never heard of this trick so I had a fun time showing it to them and saying the punchline in both English and Japanese, "全部食べましたよ！(zenbu tabemashita yo)."
Finally I showed the kids the most complicated pattern that I know. First I did the cat's whiskers (which I found out later is called "蝶 (chou)" or "butterfly" in Japanese). The kids know the word for cat though so most of them figured out the US-Cat's Cradle equivalent word for it when I put the "whiskers" up to my face. Next I showed them Jacob's Ladder which many students though was a bridge (they even said it in English). It's called" 橋 (hashi)" or "bridge" in Japanese. Though it is also another version of the Tokyo Tower if you hold it vertically and pinch your top index finger and thumb together. I had to draw a picture of a ladder to explain what it was in English and the Japanese word for "ladder" is "梯 (hashigo)" which makes me think that maybe it was a pattern that came from Japan and got mistranslated in English (I mean, I always thought that it looked more like a bridge than a ladder anyway).
After my classes were over for the day I was sitting in the teacher's room studying some Japanese. A first grader was sitting near me even though class was in session since she had said earlier that she wasn't feeling well (though I think she just wanted to sit in the warmth for a while). She seemed a bit bored so I took out my Cat's Cradle string and showed her some moves. She didn't know how to do any of the patterns so I taught her the cup-and-saucer. One of the other teachers saw us playing and gave me a real Cat's Cradle string (a seamless one which makes it much easier). Then the secretary came over and showed us some really awesome moves - it was like she could do the Cat's Cradle game all by herself! In the end I think the first grader had a fun time though I found out later that I had taught her the non-Japanese way of setting up her string (using her index fingers) - apparently most Japanese people use their middle fingers instead - whoops!
That's all for now, hopefully I'll post again soon!
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