Teeth!

Today, I thought I'd teach my non-Japanese friends about a little piece of Japanese culture. Can you guess which piece? :)

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Americans, and many places around the world have the "tooth fairy" or something of sort. Where the tooth is placed under the pillow, and in the morning, the child finds some money there. Yay! But what do they do in Japan, you ask?

In Japan, if the tooth is a bottom tooth, it is thrown over the roof of the house. And if it is a top tooth, it is buried underneath the house. There is a little variation depending on who I asked. I was told sometimes that the bottom tooth needs to be thrown over the Japanese style rafters inside the house, and sometimes I was told that it needs to fly all the way over the actual outside roof. Same with the top teeth. Top teeth I was told need to be thrown down into the Japanese style basement thing, and others said top teeth actually need to be buried.

You can learn a bit more here and here.

I find it funny that when I brought it up to each of my Foreign friends that are married to Japanese locals, they generally had no idea what I was talking about. They all have children under 3, so how would they know? Its just interesting to me, the types of cultural differences and new customs that you can learn all the time. We don't know what we don't know, until we have a reason to know it. :) They will all find out when their children lose their first teeth, and their Japanese husbands or wives start working out their arm muscles. :)