October 9th

The Harvest Moon has been fantastic here. I always saw a "Man in the Moon"! Remember the little song, "I see the moon, the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me!"? But here it is a "Bunny in the Moon". This is a little scarf I bought showing the bunny cavorting across the surface of the moon. There are little bunny pastries in the shops. It reminds me of Easter. The Bunny Rabbit on the Moon Information

With only a 2% Christian population, there’s not a lot of widespread Easter celebrating that goes on in Japan, although several million Japanese Christians have been celebrating and contemplating the season and churches will, of course, be packed on Easter Sunday from Sapporo to Saitama and from Kanagawa to Kyoto to Kagoshima.
Not a lot of Easter Bunny goings on in Japan, comparatively speaking. However, throughout the year, about once a month in fact, Japanese (and Chinese and Vietnamese and Koreans, virtually all East Asians…) think of bunny rabbits, or, more properly, one special bunny rabbit more than most Westerners. That one, special bunny rabbit is, of course, the Rabbit on the Moon. In Japanese the word for rabbit is “usagi” (うさぎ, or 兎) and when Japanese and other East Asia residents look up at a full moon, they don’t see a pockmarked man with a goofy smile staring (leering?) down at them, no, they see a cavorting rabbit. How about you?

If you would like to see how they outline the moon bunny - go to purpleslinky.com/offbeat/the-man-and-the-bunny-in-the-moon/ - sorry I don't know how to make a link on this blog. It is very interesting and I think the kids would like to see it.