Volume 2: Festivals!
Episode 6: Sports FestSports Fest - On this day, everyone in the school participates in sports events. Teams are formed differently, depending on how each school does it. Sometimes, teams are simply classes, sometimes they might say Class 1 of Years 1-3 are on one team, etc. During the Sports Fest, most of the events wil be competetive, and the teams will play against one another for points to see who can accumulate the most throughout the day. Teams assign people to each event and strategize to put their best people in certain events to maximize their probability of winning. Competetive events range from traditional foot races to other more unusal physical activities, such as ball tossing and calvary battles. There are also some noncompetitive events which are merely for exhibition, such as the cheerleading and team gymnastics.
Bloomers Are Underwear! - Certainly, in English (especially British English), "Bloomers" refers to baggy pants or underwear. However, as the word was adopted in Japan, it came to refer to girls' P.E. shorts.
Basket Scramble - This is a sport where there are lots of small balls, usually colored red and while, and the goal is to get as many of them into a basket located fairly high up. With two teams tossing in a free for all, the competition is to see which teams put more of their colored balls into the basket by the end of the time limit.
Calvary Battle - This is an event where three people form a base and one person rides on this base, resulting in a "cavary" unit. Teams will form into the units and go at each other. Each rider will have a headband in their team color, and the goal is to take these headbands from their opponents. Whichever team is the last to still have their headbands in tact is the winner.
Two Chinese Characters Equal One Word - When Yukari tells her class that she has one word for them, in Japanese she actually literally says that she has two Chinese characters for them, because the word "victory" is made up of two Chinese characters.
Teruteru-Bouzu - This is a simple doll that people put in their windows as a charm to keep the rain away the next day. It looks kind of like a ghost - something round wrapped in while cloth or tissue and tied off so the round part of the head and the rest of the cloth or tissue becomes the body. There is a children's folksong about this, where one of the lines effectively says that the its head will be chopped off if it doesn't keep the rain away.
Kicking a Shoe Off to Predict the Weather - Traditionally, this was done using a geta, which is a Japanese wooden clog. Since geta are square, they can also land on their sides, giving the fortune more dimensions. However, since few people wear geta these days, people do this with regular shoes and use a more simplified version of the fortune telling, where if it lands upright, it will be clear and if it lands upside down, it will rain.
O-S - This comes from the French phrase, "Ho! Hisse!", which roughly translates to "Heave-Ho!". The phrase is truncated to "O-S" in Japanese because the "H" is silent in French.
Don't Call Me Kaorin! - "Kaorin" is a nicknami for "Kaori" and it is awfully familiar for a teacher to address a student by a nickname that is based on a first name. It is also certainly a level of familiarity that Kaorin wouldn't want with Mr. Kimura.
No Culture Fests in Grade School - Culture fests are generally for middle and high school. Elementary schools have performing arts day, where each class prepares some sort of presentation, such as a play or singing in chorus, which would be done on stage in the school auditorium.
Festival Dances - Folk dancing has become a tradition for Japanese school sports fests. At festivals held during the summer, the Bon Dance is generally the customary dance. However, culture fests do not have a dnce associated with it, and Tomo's "Culture Dance" is purely fictional.
Episode 7: Culture Fest
The Pun in "Fairyland Class" - This episode title is actually a pun. In Japanese, this title reads otogi no kumi, where kumi means "class". However, if this was otogi no kuni, it is the standard phrase meaning "fairyland", where kuni means "land" or "kindgom". Thus, literally, the title means "Fairyclass", but unfortunately, in English, the pun doesn't work.
Culture Fest - During the Culture Fest, students take on various projects. Some set up food and drink booths, others set up events like a shooting range, and yet others will put on displays of what they've been working on in their clubs (like a Bio club might show off its collection of bugs or something). People also put on performances with band and theater troupes. These groups can be clubs, classes, sports teams, any cohesive group of students, and many students will be part of more than one group. Basically, students take about a week or so and do nothing but prepare for this festival. This idea is to have fun, but to also learn organization skills, since almost everything is left up to the students.
Tomo's Problem With "Cafe" - Unlike English, which has a phonetic alphabet system (where you can roughly guess how a word is spelled, even if you don't actually know it), when writing in Chinese characters in Japanese, you either know it or you don't. There is no way to guess how it would be written if you do not remember how to write it. At the chalkboard, Tomo can't remember how to write the first Chinese character in "cafe" and Chiyo helps out by writing it for her lower on the chalkboard.
Osaka's Funny Names for the Stuffed Animals - Osaka names two of the stuffed animals for sale as "Tsutenkaku" and "Hanshin". Tsutenkaku is a tower, and it is a famous landmark in Osaka. Hanshin is the name of a railway company, which owns the Hanshin Tigers, the baseball team in Osaka.
Memorial Service for the Stuffed Animals - When Yukari suggests burning all the stuffed animals, it is a partial reference to the tradition of burning much of the product of their hard labor during a culture fest. The idea is that after having put all that hard work into builing booths and displays, they are no longer needed afterwards. However, it seems disrespectful just to dump them in the garbage, so it is considered better to burn it all at the end. Of course, this is not any sort of memorial service. For a memorial service, one might burn things having to do with the person who passed away, but since this is unrelated to the culture fest, Yukari is completley off base here. In addition, the stuffed animals are people's belongings, not the product of their hard word for the culture fest. No one in their right mind would think of burning them, even if they were setting up to burn other things.
Episode 8: New Year's Dream Special
New Year's Dreams - Traditionally this is defined as the dream one has either on the night of New Year's or the second day of the New Year. The superstition is that this dream will come true.
Bamboo and Pine Decoration - This is traditional New Year's decoration. It is set out at the entrance of the home to signify an invitation to that year's god and as a place for the god to stay.
Talking Pigtails - It is interesting to note that Chiyo-chan's pigtails speak in the Osaka dialect.
Tomo's Sexy Pose - When she says, "Lupin", this is a reference to the anime series Lupin III.
Ouija is Still Single? - In Japanese, the word for the Ouija board game equvalent is kokkurisan. Because it ends in san, it sounds like a name ending in the honorific "-san", which can be translated as "Mr.", "Miss", "Mrs.", etc. Thus, the segue from what's popular at school to Ouija being dumped.
Hawk! Eggplant! - There is a saying that goes something like, "First, Fuji; second, Hawk; third, Eggplant". This refers to the lucky things to see in a New Year's dream in order of how lucky they are. Thus, Osaka holds up a hawk and an eggplant and Mt. Fuji appears behind her.
Gang Apparel - The long skirt, shades, cold mask, headband, and the long jacket on Chiyo-chan are all stereotypical fashion choices that delinquent students in gangs prefer.
Call Me "Kaori" - While the nickname "Kaorin" is a pretty familiar form of address, just using her given name straight up is even mroe intimate because, generally, only family members and significant others will use a given name with no embellishments. Thus, when Kaorin asks Sakaki to call her "Kaori", she is asking for a closer relationship with Sakaki.
First Visit to a Shrine - This tradition is called hatsumoode. Strictly speaking, hatsumoode is a person's first visit to a shrine in the New Year, no matter when one goes. However, many consider a true hatsumoode to be a visit to a shrine on the the stroke of midnight, just as the New Year begings, and there are always crowds of people at shrines at that time.
Episode 9: Miss Sakaki
Lining Up in Order of Height - This is often done in Japanese schols for various occasions when students are required to stand in rows. The American version would be to get in alphabetical order.
How Tall is 170cm? - (Even if you know your metrics, conversions are a pain.) This translates to approximately 67 inches or 5'7". Being 5'7" at the age of 16 may not be incredibly remarkable in America, but by Japanese standards, where the average height is much shorter, 5'7" is definitely quite tall.
Mon Petit - In Japan, Mon Petit is a brand of cat food made by Purina, and it is pronounced, "Monpuchi".
Giants and Hanshins - In Japan, baseball teams are owned by companies. The Giants are owned by Yomiuri, a newspaper company, and they are based in Tokyo. The Tigers are owned by Hanshin, a railway company, and based in Osaka. These two teams have been rivals for a very long time. The plushy sitting on Chiyo-chan's shelf is a giabbit. It is the mascot for the Giants.
