Jeffrey Jones

Today we did some Japanese poetry. Now when most people think Japanese poetry they immediately think of the good old haiku. This is probably the most famous, accessible and bastardised-by-foreigners form of poetry from the land of the rising sun.

Do you haiku?

What a lot of people don’t realise is that for a poem to be a haiku it must have two things. The first is the familiar syllabic structure of 5-7-5 but there is also a requirement to use a word to set the scene in terms of the season, this is called a きご (kigo).

As a dumb-as-rocks example. なつ (summer) could be used; however more prosaic words are favoured. For example ゆき (snow) can be used to represent winter. Famous Haiku writers hoarded these words to be unleashed in their next 17 syllable masterpiece.

However because we are the worst class in the school ours tended to be a bit less cerebral. In fact I only wrote three, the rest weren’t haikus (More on that later)

So, without further ado, here are my (attempt to be serious) haikus:

はるあいが　
ほしいですから
はなみみる

Naturally this doesn’t translate directly but the rough gist of it is. “Spring love is desired so I will watch the cherry blossoms”…. Trust me when I say it scans better in the original Japanese. Heart-rendingly beautiful isn’t it. Ok, on to number 2.

ふゆさむい
しんぞういたい
たすけてよ

“Winter is cold, heart is painful, help me!”… emo isn’t it.

なつのほう
がいちばんすき
わらいます

“Summer is best, smile” end on a happy note.

Not haiku

Following is an example of a “Not haiku” because there is no kigo. Therefore I am going to keep them on one line. These are easier to make so I played silly buggers and made a lot more.

せんせいは　しんせつなひと　ごまをする – “Teachers are nice…honest!”
ごまをする is a word in Japanese which is the equivalent of brown-nosing or singing the praises with a hint of sarcasm…there is a great hand gesture to go with it.

ガンダムの　パイロットです　ゲームだけ – “I am a Gundam Pilot! Only a game”
I have recently become addicted to a big robot game in a local arcade…

ポールさん　おんなのひと　ここるある – “Paul has the mind of a woman”
Shout out to Paul. I DID say I was playing silly buggers didn’t I.

サンダーは　アクイリアスが　だいすき – “Sander loves Aquarius”
Sander is another student in my class who has a small collection of Aquarius drinks bottles on his desk every day.

ジョンさんは　よがのせんせい　あしいたい – “John is a yoga teacher, legs hurt”
John is probably the nicest guy in the class and also a yoga practitioner… ouch.

はいくでも　がいこくじんの　わるいです – “Haiku but written by a foreigner so it is bad”
True…true…

Right, I shall stop inflicting my amateur cultural abortions upon you. At the end of the lesson we each wrote our best two down and they will be entered into a competition.

The class whose student wins (as decided by the teachers when they have stopped laughing) gets a free restaurant visit. Whoooah!

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