Explore everyday life in Japan
We all have one amongst our friends or our family, a person who, no matter the weather, has a seemingly supernatural power to attract rain. Whenever these people have important outdoor plans—graduations, birthday parties, barbecues, weddings, vacations, honeymoons, etc.—it invariably rains, and because of this, these people often become the brunt of our little jokes. Here comes Joe. Everybody, grab your umbrellas. Or, Don’t invite Amy. If you do it’ll rain for sure.
In Japanese, there are words for these people. They are simple compound words that are made by combining ame (雨), the Japanese word for rain, with either ona (女) or otoko (男). Ona and otoko are gender based words that can be used to describe girls or boys, women or men. When translated directly, the words ame-ona and ame-otoko end up sounding something like “rain-woman” and “rain-man”.
Not surprisingly, there are also words in Japanese for people who have the opposite power over the weather, people who, no matter the day, the sun seems to follow around and smile upon endlessly. These people are called hare-ona (晴女) or hare-otoko (晴男).
I have found that I tend to be somewhat of an ame-otoko. If you invite me to an outdoor event, especially if you invite my sister-in-law and I together, chances are very likely that your plans will be ruined by rain.
So which are you? Feel free to comment below.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.