I believe today is the “Midsummer Day of the Ox” (土用の丑の日 – doyou no ushi no hi) in Japan.
What’s that? Well, basically it seems to be a day to eat eel (unagi). It is said that eating eel gives us stamina and energy to survive the hottest season, so that is why we eat it during the hottest time of the year in Japan. Sometimes this day is referred to as ‘unagi day’.
Midsummer Day of the Ox can fall on different days each year, but it is usually at the end of July or the beginning of August. The date depends on some complicated calendar stuff which, to be honest, I don’t really understand. See here for more details!
I was confused when I first saw the name of this day in Japanese. I thought ‘doyou’ meant ‘Saturday’ and I thought ‘ushi’ meant ‘cow’, so it seemed more like ‘Beef Saturday’ than ‘Midsummer Eel Day’! Actually, ‘doyou’ means ‘the end of the season’, and because of the old calendar, this day now falls in the middle of summer, thus ‘Midsummer Day of the Ox‘.
So, why the Ox? Well, I’m not sure actually. It might be something to do with the Chinese zodiac, or it might just be that we need the strength of an ox to survive ‘natsubate‘ (‘summer fatigue’). ‘Natsubate’ is something I think I and my friends and colleagues have been suffering from, but I didn’t even know it had a name! The above link has some helpful hints for combating this fatigue, so I will be studying this carefully… right after a go find a big portion of hitsumabushi! 😉
Haikugirl's Japan 