I'm sure I've posted about this before. A few years ago, maybe 10 or so, a Japanese comedian released a silly song that unexpectedly went viral, and suddenly it and he were everywhere. It's in simple English, so anyone can understand, and is so ridiculous that one can't help but smile at it.

I bring it up now because I heard my oldest son singing it this morning as he was getting dressed in his room. Although I'm sure I probably played it for him when he was one or two for distraction purposes, I don't think I've played it for him since that time. Maybe he and his friends discovered it on a YouTube binge? They are reaching that age where their pop culture consumption and knowledge is going to rapidly outpace mine, and now with the internet that pop culture awareness also expands backwards in time in a way it never did for my generation.

Like I said, it's a silly song, but it did take Japan by storm for a few months at least. I remember walking around out and about and people stopping me just to say pen pineapple apple pen. It may seem strange that a weird lyric from a silly Japanese song would be told to foreigners, but I'm sure the fact that it was in English and simple English that every one understood and all Western foreigners in Japan are expected to understand English had something to do with it. So really it made for the perfect thing for a shy Japanese to say when they wanted to communicate with a foreigner but otherwise felt they couldn't.

Speaking of my oldest son, he lost a tooth the other day. Now in Japan, the tradition when you lose a tooth is to throw it onto the house roof. Well—I've heard variations on this. Some people say you throw it on the roof for top teeth and you throw it down (or bury it) for bottom teeth. But my wife says at her house they threw all teeth on to the roof, so that is at least one Japanese belief on the matter.

At any rate, when they were young we decided we'd use the US idea of the tooth fairy instead. If any of you aren't familiar with this, you place a baby tooth under the pillow when you go to sleep and in the morning in place of the tooth will be one or a few coins. Yes, this idea was going to cost us, but we thought it might be fun for the kids.

I usually don't plan ahead very well and so I have to use whatever coins I have in my wallet, which, as you might imagine, are usually Japanese coins. Sometimes I don't have any and will have to do a quick night run to the nearest convenience store. The other night, however, I happened to have a handful of US and Canadian money. I had bought it at a gaijin sale—a sale of departing expats when they sell everything they don't want to bring with them when they leave. Why he had a foreign coin jar, who knows! Maybe he brought them with him when he came over for some strange reason. Hey, people don't exactly think rationally when they move here. They are excited and nervous and do things on impulse. I've seen stranger things brought.

Anyway, I figured coins are always interesting so I bought his coin jar. And good thing I did; it turned out to be very useful! I found four US quarters in the jar and decided to use them for the tooth fairy's payment.

But here is where my friends in #silvergoldstackers might appreciate the story. When he woke up and saw the booty was US coins, he immediately checked the dates. "I wonder if any are before 1965" he excitedly yelled. I hadn't even thought about that. The boy is ahead of me! For those who don't know, prior to 1965 US quarters were 90% silver. When he gets older, he's going to make a find silver stacker. If Hive is still around, I'll have to get him to join our group!

(Sadly, no, none of them were pre-65 quarters)

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.