1) Passing food chopstick to chopstick
This superstition is more like a famous taboo. This superstitious rule is really well known and was even followed in my not so superstitious household. In Japan, it’s considered bad luck to pass food from one set of chopsticks to another set. This is because this practice happens during a funeral after the cremation process is done, when the 2 relatives carry the remaining bones into the box. There’s no doubt it’s frowned upon in Japan to do anything related to funerals and death while eating or in any activity, really.
2) Sending gifts with even number of bills
In the home of people who believe in Feng shui, or (Fuusui) in Japanese, they gift people with cash in red envelopes but always in even amounts. It’s believed to be bad luck to give gifts with odd number bills. In weddings, the number ending in 8 would be the ideal amount for gifts. Sending a gift of odd number bills could even mean death.
3) Don’t stab your chopsticks upright into rice
It’s not a good omen to stab chopsticks in your bowl of rice. This is also related to death and the food people offer to dead people called the Pillow Meal (Maku-ra-meshi). The Pillow Meal is a bowl of rice with chopsticks stabbed on it and is provided to a dead person by their head. Japanese people avoid doing things that resemble funeral scenes or dead people. This is one of those superstitions parents tell their kids not to do at the dinner table.
4) Hide your thumbs from an ‘occupied’ hearse
The Japanese word for “thumb” is oyayubi which translates into “parent finger.” You might hear something along the lines of, “your parents will die young if you don’t hide your thumbs!” It’s believed that spirits of the dead, vengeful or not, hang around hearses. If you don’t hide your thumbs while a funeral procession passes, then the spirit will enter your body from underneath your thumbnails!
5) Avoid stepping on the border of a tatami mat
One thing that you should never do is step on the border of a tatami mat, called tatami no heri, as it is said to bring bad luck. Some tatami borders have family emblems engraved on them, so stepping on the border is said to be “stepping on your parents’ heads.
6) Never write a person’s name in RED ink
Japanese tombstones, bohi, are marked with the names of family members, with names written in black and red ink. The deceased members have their names
marked in black, while those who are still living will have their names written in red.
