{"id":2833,"date":"2011-05-05T13:06:09","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T17:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2011-05-06T05:40:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T09:40:19","slug":"cucumber-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=2833","title":{"rendered":"Cucumber Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\ufeffOn <a title=\"A Day For Bold and Decisive Action\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1432\">March fourth<\/a>, I\u00a0explained why\u00a0it&#8217;s my favorite day of the year.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the only\u00a0one in which the date itself makes a sentence.\u00a0 March forth!\u00a0 I commented that it was a day for bold and decisive action based on\u00a0the date&#8217;s pun.\u00a0 Imagine my delight to discover that May 2 is an informal holiday in South Korea some call Cucumber Day.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because when you say Five, Two (as in the actual date, 5\/2) in Korean, it sounds exactly like the Korean word for cucumber (which is also the word for pickle; so why not Pickle Day?).\u00a0 I confirmed this with a friend who speaks that language.\u00a0 <!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Koreans write\u00a0the word cucumber like this: <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\uc624\uc774<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> and they pronounce it: oh-ee.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They write the\u00a0number five: <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\uc624<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> pronouncing it: oh, and the number two: <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\uc774<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> and pronounce it ee.\u00a0 Cucumber and five-two are pronounced exactly the same.\u00a0 In\u00a0other words, on my birthday this July when I turn fifty-two, I could say (if I spoke Korean and the others at the party understood it),<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I am cucumber today,<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201d<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> and though people might wonder if I<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u2019<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">d been out in the sun too long, they<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u2019<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">d understand my attempt at a joke.<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What I liked most about this is\u00a0finding out\u00a0I&#8217;m not alone in recognizing a pun wrapped in a date, then using the pun as\u00a0the basis for a sort of informal holiday.\u00a0 I feel slightly less weird.\u00a0 Slightly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I hope you all had a wonderful Cucumber Day but if you missed it, I suggest you jot a note to yourself (I&#8217;ve lately been\u00a0suggesting\u00a0writing as a solution to most problems)\u00a0on the bottom of the December calendar page to make a note in your new calendar on May 5, 2012 to celebrate Cucumber Day by buying and eating a few cucumbers, <a title=\"Cucumber Day in South Korea\" href=\"http:\/\/joongangdaily.joins.com\/article\/view.asp?aid=2935631\" target=\"_blank\">like these people<\/a> in an article from the Korean press.\u00a0 (If you look carefully, you can see the characters for cucumber\/ five-two in the picture.)<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeffOn March fourth, I\u00a0explained why\u00a0it&#8217;s my favorite day of the year.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the only\u00a0one in which the date itself makes a sentence.\u00a0 March forth!\u00a0 I commented that it was a day for bold and decisive action based on\u00a0the date&#8217;s pun.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=2833\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,11],"tags":[380,381,390,383,382,269,26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2833"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7396,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions\/7396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}