Meeting a Living Legend

by Cassidy Ladan (Canada)

I didn't expect to find Japan

There is an animal in Japan called the ‘Tanuki’, which is often translated into English as ‘Raccoon Dog’. This is not a very good translation, because it is neither a raccoon nor a dog, nor particularly closely related to either. What it is, however, is a small, chubby, gray and brown-striped creature who features prominently in Japanese myth and folklore. It is said to be a trickster who meets travellers in the in-between places between the real world and the spirit world. It was in such a hazy, liminal space that I ran into such a creature. I went to Japan as part of an exchange between my 4-H club and the Japanese LABO organization. I was 16, and I left Canada, alone, to fly halfway across the world to spend two months in a country where I didn’t know the language and wouldn’t know anybody going with me. It was a life-changing experience. I made fast friends with the other delegates, and I found a sense of independence and self-confidence through navigating the streets and transportation systems of the massive metropolis that is Tokyo. I became a kind of big sister to my young host-siblings, and I was half-inducted into the group of housewives, including my host-mother, that met once a week to have dinner and talk about their families. Near the end of the trip, we went to Mt. Kurohime. Mt. Kurohime is part of the Nagano prefecture, located on the western side of the main island of Japan. Like most mountains in Japan, it is actually a dormant volcano. Coming from the Canadian Rockies, I was somewhat mystified by the lush green ‘mountains’ that were so unlike the frigid, rocky outcroppings I was used to in Jasper and Banff. They were no less beautiful, but in an entirely different way. The sense of wonder I got from these rolling forests harkened back to a youth spent running around in the woods behind my parents’ farmhouse, looking for something mystical hiding in every stand of trees or upon an old discarded boulder. When I went back to Canada, I would be in my last year of high school, and after that, it would be the scramble of University and struggling to figure out what I would do for the rest of my life. Right now, however, I was completely free of any burdens or trappings of expectation because I was halfway across the world, and free to be exactly who I was at any moment. Late one night, I was walking from my cabin to the main mess hall. I had with me; one dull flashlight, and 16 years experience of running around in the woods, blazing my own trail and always half-expecting to find something wondrous. I turned a corner and stopped dead in my tracks when my flashlight caught the eyes of a creature low to the ground. ‘A camp cat’ my brain first supplied, which was a common-enough occurrence in many Canadian campsites. I spent a moment more staring at the creature, staring at me, and I realized ‘no, certainly not a cat’. It appeared thusly; it was a short, chubby creature on the ground on all fours, it wore a black mask of fur around its eyes and its tail was thick and fluffy like the softest bottle brush. Half awake, wandering around a place where the human world and the wild world just met in the fading light of dusk, I stared down at a Tanuki; a little spirit greeting me on my travels from one place to another. After only a moment, I said goodbye to the Tanuki and went on my way. Less than a month later, I would return to Canada and 4 hard years of University education that boiled wild places down to simple Latin names, and strict checklists. For that moment, however, I was in a true wild place, meeting a magical little creature who had come to see me off before I left the wild place behind, for a time.