Like my blog about Dutch fairy tales, here's one on Japanese fairy tales. When I was 13, I went to stay with my aunt and uncle (he was working for DuPont in Tokyo)for over three weeks. It was the scariest, most exciting, most stressful, most fantastic (sublime really) experience I had ever had up until that point. Exactly like a fairy tale!
I was on a plane for over sixteen hours (that's a hell of a long portal), and we arrived in Japan before we had left the U.S. (because of the time change). The food was different, but delicious. I ate everything I was given to try (chocolate covered ants, dried sardines, sashimi- real raw fish that they killed in front of us)and drank everything put in front of me (Cal-Pis,its like gatorade, milk from a vending machine in 90 degree weather, real loose leaf green tea, saki of course- there's no drinking age in Japan).I was exactly like Alice going through the portal and into Wonderland, eating and drinking everything in sight. Unfortunately I never grew or shrank, but I did pick up and expensive taste for sashimi and saki and that only shrinks my husbands wallet!
My aunt took me to a flea market surrounded by Buddist and Shinto shrines and there I found one of my favorite books as a child/adult. It was a picture book of different Japanese fairy tales. Most of them were traditionally performed in Karibuki theater to the accompaniment of the shamisen (a stringed instrument that is plucked to make the sound most recognizable from Japanese music). But these adult myths were displaced and re-told to children with beautiful illustrations, of course.
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