As per tradition, I must enter in an entry for the first snow of the season. Like last year, the bit of flurry decorated the sky more than it did the ground. However, there are some mighty chilly winds blowing through even now, and it’s keeping things cold and winterlike. So, I’m huddling by the heating unit at home gathering courage before I suck it up and head on out the door again later tonight.

Earlier during work today, I received a request from my friend the school nurse to double-check her English translations of a play written by another friend of hers teaching at an elementary school in the mountains. A bit of correcting phrases with red ink eventually led to me being filmed while enacting the script with stuffed animals and puppets. How proud I feel taking some responsibility for a production where one of the lines is “I need to go poo-poo,” followed later by… “Then Oshyosan (the priest) went to poop. And while he was pooping…”

The poo is essential to the play you see. In the end, the evil Onibaba (an old lady that eats children) in the play is reborn (our chosen English word) out of the Oshyosan’s poo as a fly. That needs no further explanation, does it? C’mon it’s Japan, afterall. The most poo-obsessed country out there… and if you don’t believe me just google “Japan” and “poo” and I’m sure you’ll get a shitload of hits. Literally.

Anyway, I’m a little afraid what will happen if that video ever ends up shown to the wrong people. Like my friends. I know those people would never let me live it down.

The things you do for the children…