Early spring is relatively cold in Japan. When you visit some riverside, you will be able to see many canola blossoms in bloom. I love this kind of landscape.
In the case of Japan, the graduation season is March. Every school has a graduation event in March. So, actually, we have memories which are a bit bitter about it. Because students have to leave their schools and leave friends.
We have an bit interesting custom related to graduation in Japan. Girls often say to their boyfriends around the season, "Please give me your second button from your uniform". Because they have to leave friends, I mean, they seek their memory's somethings. And this practice is a kind of proposal of love.
Unfortunately, as for me I have never been told by girls that way. But it was nice to see that some girls propose boyfriends, even for me. So March is a bit of a bitter month for me.
In March, I always remember the memories of graduating school.
Updated: Apr 10, 2024
“Mayonaka 真夜中” is a Japanese word and “door” is English. Japanese often name the title of the song this way. It’s confusing. Although, they spell “Doa ドア” not “door” in Japan. I mean, this is a foreign word for Japanese people.
When I listened to this song, I was a junior high school student back then. In schools, there had been storms in classrooms, because some bad boys belonged to any class. And I didn’t know what it means to love a female yet. The lyrics of this song are a bit complicated.
In this song, she is listening to music from the record. Do you know what “record” is? It’s a black disk to record music. There were no iPhones, CD-players and Amazon yet around those days.
“Mayonaka no door,” it means “door at midnight.”
She left her lover but she is still thinking that he may come to her. She imagines her lover is standing over the door, while she is listening to music in her room. It’s midnight, therefore she feels lonely. No matter how much she hopes he comes again, nobody emerges from the door.
“Stay with me, mayonaka no door wo tataki”
Japanese singer Miki Matsubara sang this way. She was born in 1959, and passed away in 2004 unfortunately. This song was a big hit in 1979 in Japan. Those days, the Japanese economy was growing quickly. Whereas, we had many environmental problems domestically. There were many bad students in schools and also you saw many political conflicts in society. Although, Japan was lively and we were enjoying ourselves everyday, as I.
There are many imported foreign words in Japan. Those words came mainly from English or Portuguese. Of course, the Japanese Kanji are based on Chinese characters, however I can say the Japanese Kanji is a little brother of Chinese Kanji.
The Japanese language has Katakana which is a type of Japanese character. When you are learning Japanese, you will definitely be confused about Katakana. Because Katakana has a similar shape as Hiragana, as a literature. For example,
Hiragana : か ka
Katakana : カ ka
Hiragana : せ se
Katakana : セ se
If you are a primary learner, you will definitely be confused by these two types of Japanese literature. Okay, let’s see how to spell “beer” in Japanese.
English : beer
Japanese : ビール biilu
“ビール” is a foreign word based on beer in English. But both pronunciations are quite different. So, when I traveled in the US before, I experienced a very interesting “affair”.
On that trip, I went to a food court with my friend. It was in Los Angeles. We were going to have lunch, so I ordered noodles at the fast food shop. After I ordered, my friend ordered, “One noodles and one beer”. He intended to say “beer” but the shop owner understood the word as "beef". “Beer” and “ビール”. Japanese Katakana is very confusing. My friend was surprised to see beef on the noodle to be served.
Take care.