There's a name used for a particular ceremony, a festival, in Shingu that I've been trying to figure out. They translate it as "Shrine Descension". To my ears it sounds like mikoshyoroshi.

Can しょ be pronounced "shyo"? The problem is that it cannot be しお shi-o because the cadence is wrong. It's not a lengthened syllable. When Shun says it, near the end of ep 18, the five syllables are all the same length, and the "i" sound in the "shyo" is nearly imperceptible.

I wish I knew what it was. Is the "miko" in there the word that refers to priestesses? I'm going to have to hit the dictionary and see if I can come up with something.

UPDATE: You know, I'm beginning to get the hang of this, I think.

御輿 mikoshi is "portable shrine" and 颪 oroshi is "wind blowing down from mountains". Since in that festival kids carry a portable shrine down from the temple on Tenmo mountain to the beach and into the ocean, I'm sure that's it.

It also means I was wrong about the cadence, or else they're being sloppy about pronunciation. (Which has been known to occur.)

 UPDATE: One of the remarkable things about Shingu is how good Sato was at avoiding or subverting tropes that anyone else would have fallen into. But it's a mine field, with so many of them, and he did end up with one: the two teacher school. Of course, he still doesn't exactly fall into the trap, because neither of them are quite what they seem.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 09:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 262 words, total size 2 kb.