{"id":6814,"date":"2009-06-09T15:30:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T19:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=6814"},"modified":"2009-06-09T15:50:08","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T19:50:08","slug":"wit-life-42-guerrilla-rain-and-shotgun-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/09\/wit-life-42-guerrilla-rain-and-shotgun-marriages\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #42: Guerrilla Rain and Shotgun Marriages"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/a> <\/strong>is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/a><\/strong> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together <\/em>w<\/em>ith her own observat<\/em>ions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Japan has just officially entered the rainy season, a period many of us might remember as a time when it’s\"guerrillairain\" impossible to get your laundry done as there are few dry days to hang it outside.\u00a0 Last year the buzzword at this time was \u30b2\u30ea\u30e9\u8c6a\u96e8 \uff08gerira gouu<\/em>) or “guerrilla rain,” referring to the sudden fierce downpours similar to flash floods that on occasion took people’s lives and are thought to be an effect of global warming.\u00a0 Courtesy of innovation from the Japan Meteorological Agency, perhaps this year’s rainy season will be spent a bit easier.\u00a0 It has scattered GPS locators thoughout the country, enabling people to get notification on their cell phones when these squalls are about to strike. \u00a0 Thanks to technology, a little heads up will allow recipients to take cover before conditions get too bad.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because last year was so devastating, this year’s sales of rainy weather goods are already triple the previous amount.\u00a0 Many of these products have been designed to resist the guerrilla rain and wind, such as the Senz umbrella<\/a> which retails for 1740 yen and is billed as being “smart, strong and stylish.”\u00a0 Its original assymetrical shape is short and rounded in the front and long and pointed in the back, and in tests it did not turn inside out like typical umbrellas, even during 20m\/s winds (there’s a video of it on You Tube maintaining its form in a hurricane simulation machine!).\u00a0 This umbrella is from Holland but is all the rage in Japan, with it being marketed as the perfect gift for upcoming Father’s Day.\"\"<\/p>\n

Speaking of fathers, another piece on the news this morning highlighted how there is currently a trend of increasing shotgun marriages.\u00a0 In Japanese \u3067\u304d\u3061\u3083\u3063\u305f\u7d50\u5a5a\u3000(dekichatta kekkon<\/em>) used to be the term of choice for this phenomenon, but now the new phrase \u304a\u3081\u3067\u305f\u5a5a (omedeta kon<\/em>) is being used, perhaps to give it a more positive connotation (The previous term conveys a sense of ending up that way, whereas the new one involves congratulations).\u00a0 On-the-street interviews of people from various generations were carried out, and as expected the answers differed greatly by age.\u00a0 Younger participants were likely to express their approval of and even enthusiasm for shotgun marriages, whereas older ones brought up issues of disapproval and shame and doing things in the proper order.\u00a0 Despite the understanding on the side of the youth, in a survey over 80% said they would not want an omedeta kon<\/em> for themselves. \u00a0 Also, it was interesting to note that the majority of the respondents used the phrase dekichatta kekkon<\/em>, indicating that the new term is yet to fully catch on.<\/p>\n

A wedding store in Tokyo that was visited by the news crew stated a 30% increase in omedeta kon<\/em> customers this year.\u00a0 They described their “W Happy Wedding Fair” (W meaning Double) geared toward this specific clientele.\u00a0 The package involves various touches to make the ceremony easier for the pregnant bride.\u00a0 These changes from a typical service include using less pungent smelling flowers like hydrangea (and providing a room to rest\u00a0 incase these get to the bride as well), shortening the time of the ceremony to lessen its toll and providing a wedding dress that has elastic around the waistline.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what this increase in shotgun marriages can be attributed to (guerilla rain keeping people inside?), but it is an interesting trend to note.\u00a0 I personally feel like I know many more Japanese people who got married this way than people here in the States, and when I first got to Japan I was surprised they were being so open about it.\u00a0 One of my closest friends actually had her daughter (who had already been born) join in the ceremony!\u00a0 There was a drama many years back caled\u00a0Dekichatta Kekkon<\/em>, and lately couples coming together this way seems to be all the rage among celebrities, perhaps contributing to the boom.\u00a0 Discussion of shotgun marriage reminds me of\u00a0 the Japanese attitude toward abortion<\/a>, so maybe this is another area where they are more laissez-faire than their seemingly strict society would indicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Japan has just officially entered the rainy season, a period many of us might remember as a time when it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,53,9,30,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-events","category-humor","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-1LU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6814"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6830,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814\/revisions\/6830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}