Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Third Annual Ferdinand* Awards

It’s that time again!

Last year saw the first public appearance of the Ferdinand Awards,** in which I poke fun at car model names. Since beginning this “contest” I find myself questioning every car name that comes to mind.

For example, the Chevy Spark? (Oh, please don’t catch on fire!)
Or perhaps the Ford Windstar? (what does that even mean?)
And then there’s the Subaru Outback, which is .... umm, how to say this nicely? ... A car named for a place where getting lost can end very badly. Makes me want to say, “Let’s go on a road trip ... in a Street!” (Honda).

In that spirit, I once again looked around Tokushima and chose my favourite car names for you.

The rules to win a Ferdinand:
1. I have to have seen the car, either driving or parked.
2. The name has to be interesting, noteworthy, or roast-worthy.

See last year’s winners here.

And the 2013 Winners are:

Best use of “Does What it Says on the Tin”: Move (Daihatsu)

Best use of limiting what a car can carry: Fun Cargo (Don’t put any boring stuff in this Toyota!)

Best use of food for a car name: Sambar (Subaru) I ate sambar every day for lunch in India, but I don’t remember it tasting like automotive parts!

Best use of a garden tool in a car name: Spade (Toyota)

Best use of X in a car name: Roox (Nissan)

Best “What does that mean?” name: Wingroad (Nissan).

Best almost tribute to an Australian animal: Kangoo (Renault)

Car that makes me think of Stephen Fry: iQ (Toyota). Maybe he can even customise it and reverse the letters.

Car voted least likely ever to be owned by me: Town Bee (Daihatsu)

Best overall winner: Swift (Suzuki)

**Father Ferdinand Verbiest, a Jesuit missionary to China, astronomer, mathematician, and inventor. Around the 1670s, he designed a steam-powered toy automobile, which some people claim is the oldest self-propelling vehicle.

**The first distribution of the awards were in a letter to a friend while I was living in Tokyo.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Firefly Festival in Misato


Far from my childhood of running around the backyard with an empty dill pickle jar, I stood on the side of a road staring into the unreachable woods. Car headlights sporadically lit the trees while I stood amongst the blinking crowd. We were tourists, there only to see fireflies. And for a moment, we were swept back in our memories. Then another car passed, its headlights pulling us to reality once more.

In the mountains of Misato, in Yoshinogawa City.

It strikes me as strange: driving an hour into the moutains in order to stand at the side of the road for the mere glimpse of a lightening bug. The Japanese people I spoke with all said yes, they, too, caught lightening bugs as children. All I can do is wonder how. It isn't possible to catch them over the highway barrier that kept us from falling off the road into a ravine. Has Japan changed so much? Is this the only way to see lightening bugs in Japan - once a year standing across a chasm?

Car headlights lit the trees.


The thoughts are uncomfortable ... they naturally lead me back to my own past. They make me wonder if Iowa, too, has changed so much. Do children there still run around the backyard catching fireflies, or is there now a chasm at home? Maybe the chasm is in my memory. Are those hundreds of fireflies I remember simply the natural exagerration of a small child, to whom everything seems bigger?



Lightening bugs are beautiful and wondrous creatures. Seeing them last weekend made me smile - but it was not the same. Very little makes me miss Iowa summers, but Misato's Firefly Festival might do the trick.