minimalistic

がんばらないで自由になるためのブログ

How do you say "Turkeys voting for Thanksgiving" in Japanese?

I noticed a interesting phrase when I listened a podcast for learning english as an ESL learner.  That is "Turkeys voting for Thanksgiving".

Though the word-for-word transletion for this phrase in Japanese is "感謝祭に投票する七面鳥", it doesn't make any sense when you say it in Japanese because few Japanese eat Turkeys on Thanksgiving.  We Japanese has an expression to say the similar situation using a kind of birds.

We can say "鴨が葱を背負ってくる (Kamo ga negi wo syotte kuru)" to describe the situation.  It means "wild duck comes carrying leeks".  We may also say "kamo-negi" in short.  Kamo is as wild duck.  The origin for Kamo-negi is our tradition that we used to cook wild ducks with leeks in a pot.  The idea of this phrase is that the stupid duck having flavoring vegetables walks to you, assinsting to be cooked.

Kamo-negi is used as metaphor not only for making suicidal choice of a political vote but for putting yourself at unfavourable condition by own choice because of ignorance.

People might have the common feelings that birds sometimes behave stupid.