Super Choose Day is coming soon

Every time Super Tuesday comes around I remember the first time I read about it, in a number of Japanese newspapers in early 2000 when I was living in Ichinomiya (right in between Nagoya and Gifu). Back then the internet was not so at one's fingertips as it is now, and I was reading about Bush vs. McCain in the primaries with a paper newspaper in one hand, paper dictionary in the other, and a notebook. I was 20 years old and not being American I hadn't paid much attention to US electoral politics until then, but I read everything I could find in the newspaper or two I bought daily, and the election was now getting quite a bit of coverage so I started to read about it. They were mentioning a day coming up called スーパーチューズデー, which I naturally assumed was Super Choose Day, since it was about an election. The newspapers did mention that it took place on 火曜日 (Tuesday), but I didn't put two and two together since Choose Day fit the katakana name so well.

I remember thinking that the name was a bit weird, and that either 1) the US chose a really juvenile-sounding way to name a day of such importance, or 2) the Japanese had for some reason enough interest in such a day that they gave it their own term, since Super Choose Day sounds a lot more like something they would come up with.

After a few weeks of this the day went by, and I stopped giving the term any thought. So it wasn't until 2004 with Kerry and the other Democratic primaries in the news that I realized that oh! it's Super Tuesday. Not Choose Day.