Friday 21 November 2008

Haiku time!

I noticed while posting the last post that I have a tag 'haiku' - we did haiku and also senryuu at the Japan Foundation course last night. Where haiku celebrate the beauty of nature, senryuu are ironic or sarcastic social commentaries in the haiku 5-7-5 syllable format.

隣には
知り合いの人
世界、狭!

Sitting beside me
Someone I already know
This world is so small!

Turns out I'd already sent emails about the MA to the guy sitting beside me, but neither of us realised until the people beside us started talking about JET and we joined in.

Although my favourite one of the evening has to be one where he came up with the idea and I managed to fit it into 5-7-5 syllables - you had to do four seasonal ones, with this one for spring and the last line already there:

二日酔い
誰のせいだろ
桜かな

I'm so hung over...
Who is to blame for this pain?
The cherry blossoms!

The かな doesn't actually mean 'could it be?' but just emphasises the cherry blossoms, but we used it like that anyway. And the apparently official practice of allowing a line to be one syllable over also worked in our favour, as the middle line if spelled correctly is 8 syllables... Lots of fun had by all.

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