Japanese with anime voice: episode39
Hello, I’m Sachi.
April 25 is 国際ペンギン (kokusai pengin) Day. This is one of the international days, and the international notation is World Penguin Day. It is said that Antarctica, where penguins are located, seasonally winters from April to May. Around the 25th, Adelie penguins usually appear at the U.S. Antarctic base, and the celebration of Penguin Day among scholars there spread around the world, and it became one of the international days. It would be great to see live penguins! I want to see them, too.
I was wondering if there are seasons in Antarctica. I thought it was just winter, or cold forever. I didn’t know there were seasons in Antarctica.
In my hometown, wild animals are bears, boars, deer, and monkeys. There are raccoon dogs, otter-like creatures, civets, and many other animals… But the ones we see most often are bears, boars, deer, and monkeys. But I would not want to encounter anything other than deer, if possible. Well, almost all of them are beasts.
Come to think of it, I heard that bears appeared at my hometown shrine last summer or so. Two of them showed up. They looked like a family, we guess. We all laughed and wondered if they had come to the shrine to pray. In fact, it would have been a serious situation if we had encountered them, so it was no laughing matter.
But the other day, when I was hiking in the mountains, I heard this story from someone who guided me around the mountain. A neighbor was resting at a rest stop near the trailhead when they saw a bear running right beside them. They said there was another bear and it was climbing a tree. That’s too scary.
I’ve been to the mountains several times, but I’ve never encountered a bear yet, thank God. But what should we do if we encounter one? I used to hear that it was a good idea to pretend to be dead. And everyone believed it. In Japan, I think it was around the Showa period? I guess until about the 90’s in the Western calendar. But as the years went by, I realized that such behavior was meaningless. That’s true. If you were to wait and hold your breath, it would still be understandable, but even a bear would not believe it if you pretended to be dead the moment you encountered it. I wonder who came up with that idea.
What about overseas? Have you ever heard of such an unfounded coping mechanism?
But bears can climb trees, and they are much faster than humans. There is no way to escape from a bear. But I heard that bears are not good at running hills down. I heard that bears can fall down a slope. I thought that if I encountered one, I could just go down the slope, but then I thought about it, if a bear came tumbling down behind me, there would be no way to escape. Being run over by a rolling bear would be worse than being pulled over by a car. Well, it’s a rare experience, but that’s what it would seem like if I lived.
I guess the only local wild beasties that are as harmless as penguins are deer. They’re not scary, in fact, they’re rather cute. But I’ve heard that someone’s car was wrecked after an encounter with a deer. I wish they wouldn’t just jump out at you on the road at night. They do seem to come up to the light, though.
Speaking of which, I have a little question. In Japan, it is often said that foxes and tanuki ( like raccoons) can 化かす (bakasu) people. 化かす (bakasu) means to work on a person’s mind and make them lose their ability to make normal decisions.
They sometimes changed their appearance to that of a human and seduced humans, or they could not see them, but somehow strange phenomena occurred. For example, a person may take a road that he/she always takes, but somehow goes in the wrong direction, or somehow gets there in 10 minutes instead of the 20 minutes it would normally take. Such things usually happen on mountain roads or in the countryside. Some of what they do is good for people, some are not. It is a common story in any rural area in Japan. Foxes and tanuki are animals that 化かす (bakasu) humans. It is not scientifically proven. Well, it is almost an occult type of thing, but there are many people who believe in it. As a matter of fact, I also believe in this story.
Do you see this kind of thing in other countries as well? Have you ever heard of foxes and raccoons cheating people in your country? If so, please let me know in the comments!
If you don’t know what that means, I recommend Ghibli’s, 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ (Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko)! The story is about a group of tanuki who live in a forest that is being destroyed by humans, and their struggle to protect nature from humans. Their actions are what I mentioned earlier about deceiving people. If you watch this film, you will probably understand what I mean!
