My Italian friend, Mattia, told me about the Cheese Phantom. He is the American equivalent to the Bogey Man for kids. The Cheese Phantom lives under your bed and smells really, really bad. Sounds frightening enough to me! It also cracks me up. Of course the Italians would afraid of stinky cheese.
This reminds me of the story of the Kappa Monster in Japan. I first found out about this when I asked my booker in Osaka how you say cucumber roll. The correct word for cucumber is "kudi" and roll is "maki," but you order "kappa maki." Kappa is a monster who lives in the lake and has a hairy, flat head filled with water (I think of Nickelodeon's Arnold meets lily pad) who loves cucumbers, and somewhere along the way kudi maki became kappa maki. Check out wikipedia's entry on Kappa. It's kind of cute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_(folklore)
My Ukranian friend, Alla, just told me about the Spirit of the Home (I will call it that, but I don't know it's official name). Before you leave for a trip, everyone sits together in a moment of silence. The spirit says to you "have a nice trip!" and you say (/think), "Thanks! Please look after my home!" and then off you go.
<3
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment