janken rocks my world...in japan
Janken rock's everyone's world in Japan...
Fact.
If two teams are tied, the winner is chosen by Janken, no complaints.
If trying to decide who gets the extra portion of rice at school lunch, group janken is seen as the only fair way to do it.
Who has to go first with their English presentation? Janken it.
Who goes first in the card game? Janken.
Businessmen get caught in a rutt over negotiations - the only way out? Janken.
Two men are after the same lady...would it suprise me to hear they jankened for it? Not at all.
What is 'janken' then? A mysterious force to ensure unending justice in the universe? The ceremony to call upon a supreme being to answer the unsolved decisions in life?
Nope.
It's 'rock, paper, scissors'.
In korean, that's 'kai, pai, po'
In chinese, it is a little more complicated...
Janken clearly rules in Japan in any dispute, the janken ruling is final and always undisputed. There are many variations on the tame simple version - i have seen janken so over dramatised to the point that the students firing jankens at each other looked exactly like they were having a harry potter style duel. there are also endless variations put on the end of janken to add extra excitment - like the winner says an extra ryhme, moves their finger in one direction and if the other person doesn't move their head in the same direction they lose.
What has janken ever done for me?
Well, I won a yoga mat at a bonnenkai (party held near new year where you drink to forget all the bad things of last year) thanks to my winning a group janken. Drinking on the beach a few weeks ago happened because I won janken, which meant we partyed in my village. And when I am ever stuck for how to make lessons fun for my elementary kids, the answer is always simple: encorporate janken battles in there and they're guaranteed to love it :)
in other news,my word of today is intransigence.
Tonight, I begin Russian :D