The smell of old people

Last weekend we went back up to the mountain house (the one where we harvested rice last autumn).  The house itself is rather rustic.  It does have a bathroom and, as we discovered on this visit, a shower.  But, it does not have many other modern conveniences, such as television or wi-fi.  So, when the sun goes down at about 5:00 there isn't much to do except sit and talk.  And, if you are Japanese, sit and talk and drink.  In the course of one evening, Sid and I learned about the richness and complexity of the Japanese language.  Fumi, Hisako's son, mentioned a word that neither Sid nor I had ever heard before, "kareshu."  Evidently, in Japanese, for which there is no word for "happy," there is a word for the smell of the aged and this is it.  Hisako said that older people are so worried about having the smell of old people that there are entire cosmetic lines devoted to preventing the stink of your old self from coming out.

So, that evening, Sid and I, of course, pictured the smell of old people emanating from people in their seventies or even eighties.  But, when Nami, my 20 year old Japanese tutor, came today we asked her if she knew the word. She said, yes, that it referred to the smell of people who were "Oh, maybe about 50 or something."  Sid, now 46, is happily closer to the smell of old people than I am!!!!!  :)