November 2007
I went to a little antique shop in Azabu Juban for a look-see.
They had a lot of very reasonably priced articles as well as some completely incredible and very old antiques – some dating as far back as the very early Edo era 1615-1868, possibly even the Azuchi-Momoyama period 1568-1615. With prices that had too many 0's to count. These were museum quality and therefore behind glass.
The cheaper items were obviously meant for daily use and many had a little damage or could be considered "seconds" with kiln marks or mis-painted patterns.
A couple of elderly ladies were in the shop and were happy to show me around, but spoke no English. I was in a phase of trying to identify certain extremely stylised symbols incorporated into the porcelain. We got on well with items such as "sakura" – cherry blossom, "ume" – plum blossom, "tsuru" – crane and "koi"… well, I think you know that one!
With some hysterical sign language they explained a pattern based on octopus tentacles, "tako-karakusa". (Further research tells me this is actually now considered to be a plant called the Octopus Vine). And taught me a load of Japanese names for other common symbols too.
We had a great time, and they wanted to learn the English for these words, so we went around the shop with me doing the teaching – as far as I could recognise the pictures. "This is a crane, this one is a plover, here's bamboo and pine. Oh, this is a cloud." When we came to koi, they were surprised and delighted that we use that word in English too. They diligently made notes and we had a wonderful time.
Then we came a bit unstuck. The symbol on a pretty plate was quite clearly a chrysanthemum. As Japan's national flower this appears regularly and is very recognisable.
"Aha", said I, "This is a chrysanthemum"… producing very blank looks and a lot of discussion between them. They obviously had never heard the word before in their lives. I recalled Mum mentioning a confusion when discussing the national flower with some Japanese people at an art exhibition. Again, the word was unrecognisable to them.
Suddenly from the depths of my mind came a vision of a bilious yellow perfume set from the 1970's (my parents owned a pharmacy where I spent a lot of time as a child). It had the same symbol on it. What was it called?? I wracked my distant memory and somehow it popped back.
Oh yes… "Kiku!" I exclaimed rather triumphantly.
"Ahhhh, Kiku!" they said, somewhat relieved. Then one of them trotted behind the counter, returning with an electronic translating machine commonly used here (see my previous post about how many kanji they have to learn!)
They typed in "kiku" and jumped back in horror at the word in English. Valiantly they tried to pronounce it, but all those consonants together proved too much for them.
You see, the Japanese language, whether written or spoken, has a vowel between each consonant. My last name is pronounced "Harretto Mobb-us".
You can understand why chrysanthemum was a little too much for them with five consonants in a row!
