Settling Bets

Ellie comments below:

You know, Josh, you still owe me two towels for losing those bets when I was visiting. (said bets, dear readers, were regarding the questions "are edamame soybeans?" [they are] and "are there squirrels in japan?" [there are]). I know I forgave these debts, but looking at the totally AWESOME towels I brought back with me hanging in my bathroom, I keep thinking that was a dumb move. Towels!

Towit, a response.

For one thing, Yes: that was a dumb move. Towels! Did you all know that Imabari is famous for towels? FAMOUS! But the opportunity has, for you, ELAPSED!!!! BWAHAHAHA!

Now for another thing, NO! I owe you ONE towel for the edamamade bet, which, dear readers, I was wrong about and I hate sis and edamamde equally for as a result.
As far as this unrelenting "squirrels" issue goes however:

1) Never did we make such a towel related compact regarding this persistant "squirrels" claim of yours.

2) As everybody knows, there are no squirrels of any kind in Japan.

The Greater Japanese Banzai Squirrel of Yore, an era that occurred shortly before the Minamoto bakufu and is closely associated with the crucial "Age of Strange New Hats" in Japan was taken from its native habitats by the thousands and shipped across the dangerous straights toward the Korean peninsuela in a well documented attempt by the Japanese Emperors of Yore to avert the impending Mongol invasion as part of a fantastically unprescedented offering of uniquely domestic mythic rodentia and fungus.

Though their destiny may have been to live out a long and noble history as bold and nomadic expatriates in their strange new homeland, languishing under and eventually throwing off the shackles of oppressive Mongol rule and returning to their birthland--as is the case, we all know, with so many kinds of squirrels--sadly, the Greater Japanese Bonzai Squirrels, quite misunderstanding the nature of the role they were to play in the protection of their sacred ancestral homeland, launched themselves from the Nipponese cargo ships even as they neared the rendezvous with the Mongol fleet: a selfless and noble attack which proved however wholly successful. The Banzai Squirrels, skilled in the tradtional arts, sank Mongol vessels by the hundreds and scattered the remainders of the fleet back towards the Asian mainland---but in the course of the battle the Banzai Squirrel was lost to the sea and her wiles: gone to the last squirrel.

After hearing news of the tragic and noble sacrifice made in battle at sea, Squirrels of the Greater Bonzai type who had remained in Nihon during the affair, these having been for the most part busy looking for nuts or meditating naked under waterfalls when the call had gone out for volunteers, one year later would gather together at a little-used shrine on one of the smaller islands in the Seto Inland Sea that seperates Shikoku and Honshu, a location that is now a part of modern-day Hyogo prefecture, to commit ritual suicide in a massive, grisly autopurge remembered yearly during one of Japan's many untranslatable summer holidays.

For centuries following this sad time squirrels of any kind were rarely seen in Japan, often being mistaken for rats, pigeons, small children and okonomiyaki (see my Blogger profile picture for an example of okonomiyaki). Their numbers dwindled through the ages. Rumours circulated among sea-folk that yearly more and more squirrels were being seen sailing small ships to a mysterious island in the Seto sea, grim-faced and chittering lowly to themselves about bushido, never to be seen or heard from again.

Finally, with the collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu and the turbulent changes that the Meiji restoration brought to traditional Japan, the Japanese squirrel met its last. Commanded by Imperial edict to cut off their puffy tails, these always worn in the traditional style of their fathers and denoting their honorable rank and revered station in Japanese society, some squirrels rebelled and were wiped out with the last of the samurai in an epic but unwinnable fight that marked the end of one era and the dawn of a new day. Other squirrels tried to rejoin the new, modern society, but these were summarily hunted down and eliminated by a highly trained order of secret attack pigeons, bolstered by a new ability to supercede the old class lines and seething with centuries of jealousy over the affection that widespread confusion had unwarrantedly garned for squirrels in the pigeons' rightful stead. Still many other squirrels committed seppuku, taking their estates and families with them. In 1867 the last remaining squirrels in Japan made a final migration from all corners of the nation to meet at the famous shinto shrine on the outskirts of Kyoto: Ise. They were the first living beings to enter the inner sanctuary in millenia, but they arrived only to depart. Once inside the main shrine, they unearthed and boarded an ancient space vessel, made entirely of acorn shells and macrame, setting foot aboard the very ship that had brought the Squirrel to Japan in the first bygone days of civilization. They blasted off from the Japanese mainland and began their long, sad voyage back through the cosmos towards whatever farflung star from which they once had come to rest on earth.