A starter for 10…
TOKYO (Kyodo) – A total of 150 people named “Hirokazu Tanaka” gathered on Saturday in Tokyo’s Shibuya district in an attempt to set a world record for the largest gathering of people sharing the same full name.
The Guinness World Records for the title was set in 2023, when 256 people named “Milica Jovanovic” gathered in one place in Serbia. The Tanakas had previously held the record in 2022 with 178.
Participants must remain in one place for five minutes. Names written with different kanji characters are counted as the same, provided they are pronounced identically, with verification through identification, such as passports or health insurance cards.
When a Guinness official announced that the attempt had failed, a collective sigh rose from the crowd.
The proposer, Hirokazu Tanaka, 56, began searching for people who share his name after being inspired in 1994, when a baseball player of the same name was selected as the now-defunct Kintetsu Buffaloes’ first draft pick.
How did I know that? It was reported in this morning’s Japanese daily, The Mainichi.
Have I learned to read Japanese in the past two weeks? No. It appeared in full translation (English) on my Google feed, along with many other news stories and other articles related to places we have been since arriving here. This phenomenon does provide many highly interesting and, frankly, topical pieces.
Also on the feed, bearing in mind yesterday’s blog post:
Keys to longevity: These 11 Japanese rituals can add 11 year to your life – an article published by The Times of India on 15 October.
102-year-old ramen restaurant worker in Japan lures customers from across the world – an article also published in today’s edition of The Mainichi.
An intrusion? Well, we cannot have it both ways, can we? Especially as I have been bigging up the use of Google as a navigational tool. I guess the key question is, Where will it go next? Indeed, how far can they (whoever they are/is?) go?
We headed off, on foot, in the opposite direction to the American emporium, this morning. And Google did its job once more; Google Translate, that is…
Not that we couldn’t make sense of this particular warning anyway. It went unheeded by this posse, mind.
Dangerous creature? A good day for it.
Japanese legend has it that during the Genpei War, the Heike clan was defeated at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. The souls of the Heike warriors who perished in the naval battle are believed to have been reincarnated into a species of crab, Heikeopsis japonica.
The shells of these crabs have a pattern that looks like the scowling face of a samurai warrior. This feature is seen as a sign of their loyalty and lingering rage from the battle.
An alternative explanation, both folkloric and scientific, is that fishermen would throw back the crabs with faces on their shells, leading to a form of unintentional selective breeding over time.
I prefer the first explanation. I did ask the crab to ‘show its face’ but it wasn’t having it. And the possibility that it was indeed a Samurai warrior worked against me pushing the matter too far. So I spoke to Google instead and he/she came up with this…
As to scale…
I am calling it. Today we met an 840-year old Heike Samurai warrior. Don’t scoff, you weren’t there, and so you didn’t feel the aura the crab warrior gave off. Further evidence? Well, you saw the sign, after Google translate had done its thing. The sign was quite literally yards away.
And they were a fearsome crew…
On another note, not to be ignored…
We learned a lot about the dangers inherent to tsunamis when in Thailand last year, recorded here.
Where else would you hang out on a wet and balmy afternoon on the West Coast of Okinawa? Our most favourite haunt, Zhyvago Coffee Works… and they now know our names, too.
Not that we are stalking the establishment but we clocked this machine, earlier…
The phrase ‘a good day for ducks’ dates back to at least the 1840s. It may have originated, apparently, because rainy weather is good for hunting ducks, as it can mask a hunter’s presence.
We didn’t see any ducks today. The closest we came was this little fellah…
… so we have gone for a ready made substitute in ‘crabs’. So, there you go, our final full day in Okinawa. All we needed was a brolly each, no additional layers, and the job was a good one. We just meandered and had a most enjoyable, slow day, thinking on Bali, tomorrow onwards.
And it’s not every day you get to meet an 840-year old Samurai warrior. Now that’s longevity for you!!
Sailing off to Sparta 
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