rabbits making rice cakes on the moon!

So... I eat school lunch everyday (because thats just what you do here) and don't have any idea what I'm putting in my mouth most of the time. I've taken to asking the other teachers to explain almost every item of food to me, with special attention to the little desserts that we get everyday. Today we had this really cute little "jelly" treat (think American Jell-o only fruitier, wetter and less firm) that came in a rabbit shaped plastic container with cartoon rabbits on the top. Usually things like this have all kinds of special names that I couldn't remember in 10,000 years, but when I asked about this very detailed rabbit-snack my vice principal just blinked at me and said "we just call it 'jelly.'" Okay, fair enough. Then he comes back a few minutes later and decides to lay a short culture lesson on me, asking if I know the story behind the rabbit cartoon on the package. Things like this always get me excited because (1) its super interesting and (2) all of the Japanese people within 5 miles come running at the chance to explain something so embedded in their culture that they never get to talk about how interesting it is... here's the story (as I understand it, because as we all know, Japanese is not my first language.. so if you google search and find that I'm a touch off, please forgive me):

In Japan there is a tradition of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon. There are moon-viewings (tsukimi = looking at the moon) during the full moon, with an ancient (borrowed from China?) fairy-tale-type image of rabbits making rice cakes on the moon and to celebrate, people eat special tsukimi rice cakes (tsukimi dango). ...even Japanese people realize how cute this notion is and seem to really enjoy talking about it...

..As I was writing this post a teacher came over to ask me if I recognized cell-phone-charm representations of famous rakugoka dudes -- rakugo is a Japanese form of comedy that dates back to the Edo period (think early 1800s) and remains very popular today (with grown men though, I suspect, not young people). Basically, a guy in kimono walks onto a stage, kneels down and tells funny stories littered with pun-type humor for about 15 minutes. The teacher explaining it to me was in fits of giggles just thinking about it, and proceeded to give me detailed directions on finding every rakugo theater in Tokyo.

These people are great. They are so genuinely interested in helping me and are so proud of Japan, its culture, even what they do for a living, that they'll take any amount of time to answer all of my questions and teach me about their interests. Its amazing.

here's my rabbit-shaped jelly treat (there's pink grape jelly under the white part)

I'm headed to Tokyo today after work, so hopefully I'll have a lot more to share in another post sometime soon...