Four Equals Thirteen
When I visited Little Tokyo while living in Los Angeles, I used to wonder why some of the packages of ceramic bowls were displayed in sets of five instead of the more common sets of four.
A long time ago, a Japanese photographer asked to photograph our family and at that time we were a family of four. On the day he took our photo, he brought a stuffed animal, making it five.
It wasn’t until recently that I learned that the number 4 is considered unlucky, much like our number 13. The kanji for four in Japanese and Chinese is pronounced the same as death so the number is avoided whenever possible. Many buildings do not have a fourth floor, just as many buildings in North America do not have a thirteenth floor. A few years ago, I read a blog about a man who gave his Japanese host a set of four knives at a culinary convention. Subsequent meetings were chilly because he had in effect said, “Go kill yourselves, and here are the tools!”