Eel (Igat) ‘s day: Your students will probably eat it on the 30th of July. Why?

There is a Japanese custom to eat eel (Unagi) on a certain day during July. This year, that day is going to be on the 30th of July which is this coming Saturday. Despite the steady increase of its price, especially during the last 5 years, a lot of Japanese people still buy cooked eel at markets. As a matter of fact, even before 5 years ago, eels have been a symbol of expensive food. So then why do they buy it?

There is a long, historical story …which is long enough that we’ll need another post for that.

There are distinctive seasons in Japan. Between summer and fall — which is now — Japanese people has set a sort of transition term, and that is called “Doyou,” which can be seen in orange on the calendar below.

As you take a look at the calendar, you will also realize that there are animals applied to each day. There are 12 of them, which were used to used to express days of the week in the past in Japanese history. Those animals, by the way, are also used to express years. In this post’s writer’s case, he was born in 1989, whose animal is the snake.

Some two hundreds years ago, a popular inventor in Japan was asked by a fisher how eels, whose highest season is during early winter, can be sold in summer. He answered the question by saying, “Why don’t you sell it on a day that starts with the same letter that eels (Unagi) does?” That’s the idea. An animal on July 30th is a cow, in Japanese, “Ushi.”