My husband, daughter and I just got back from a week on the Oregon coast. We had a wonderful time, and I couldn’t resist sharing some of my favourite photos from the trip (please ignore the tipping horizons):

Before the fireworks, July 4, Long Beach, Washington

Looking down on Cannon Beach from Ecola Park (I think)

Wind-blown sand on the beach near Seal Rock, Oregon (we stayed in a cottage near here)

One day we walked about 2-3 miles down the beach to these volcanic rocks and tidal pools

My daughter rescued this star fish, which was buried in the sand, and released it on a tidal pool rock

Yaquina Head lighthouse in the fog (I’ve had a lighthouse story brewing in the back of my mind for a few years, and my inspiration was renewed as I climbed up the 110 steps of the lighthouse tower)

My daughter loves the ocean and the sand

Me trying to climb a sand dune south of Florence Oregon (it was higher and steeper than it looks!)

We were lucky to have at least one evening when the fog cleared enough for us to see the sunset

In Japan, when people look up at the night sky they don’t see a “man” in the moon, they see a rabbit. In the day, they see a crow in the sun.

Anyone who has read this blog knows I am intrigued by crows. Before I travelled to Japan, I didn’t know whether or not I would see crows there. On my first day in Japan, I woke up to familar caws coming from the rice field outside my window. I was thrilled to discover that Japan does indeed have crows, and not just ordinary crows — but giant Jungle crows.

The crows I saw that first morning were not this kind, however, though they were a little bigger and had a slightly different pitch to their calls than the Northwestern or Common crows I see at home. My first encounter with Jungle crows did not happen until my visit to a Tokyo cemetary.

Although crows (and ravens) are often associated with prophecy, wisdom and longevity (positives for the most part), when you see the huge, heavy-shouldered, bulky-beaked black shapes swooping and skulking around an old graveyard, it’s hard to forget that they are also somethimes linked to death and bad fortune. Unnerving, to say the least (although personally, I thought they were great and spent about an hour following them around with my camera, trying, unsuccessfully, to get close enough to take a recognizable photo).

While ordinary crows may be considered bad luck in Japan (especially since they have started attacking people in Ueno Park and other areas of Tokyo), if a crow happens to have three legs, it’s a totally different story.

A Japanese legends tells of how, long ago a monster was about to devour the sun. To prevent this, the rulers of heaven created the first crow, who flew into the monster’s mouth and choked him (I assume this crow had three legs, since the “crow in the sun” is supposed to have three legs, representing dawn, noon and dusk). Another story tells of how the first Emperor of Japan was travelling through the mountains and became lost. The sun-goddess sent a three-legged crow to guide him, and from that day on, the three-legged crow became an emblem of Japanese imperial rule (and the Japanese National soccer team).

                                          Note: the top photo is a crow statue outside the shrine of Miyajima near Hiroshima, and the photo at left shows a crow and some stray cats who were “sharing” food scraps at the back of a restaurant in Ueno Park, Tokyo (see, the Jungle crows really are big!). Although the story I’m working on right now is not specifically about any of these things, I’m having fun working them in (manga-loving North American girl on an exchange trip to Japan discovers Japan is not quite what she expected…. learns a lesson from some Tokyo crows….).

Anyone who has ever eaten at a Chinese food restaurant has probably seen a lucky cat. The statue cat with one raised paw often stands inside the entrance of Chinese restaurants and stores, wlecoming or beckoning people in. I was surprised to discover that the lucky cat originates, not in China, but in Japan. There, it is called Maneki-neko, the beckoning cat.

Before I travelled to Japan last spring, I did some research about the origins of Maneki-neko. I came across a few different stories. One involves a cat who saved a geisha from a snake dropping on  her head. But the one that seems most accepted is about a cat who lived at a poor temple near the city of Edo (the old name for Tokyo) about 200 years ago.

The temple priest had a calico cat, who he was fond of and shared his meagre food with. One day the cat sat at the side of the road near the temple when it began to rain. At the same time, several samurai road up on horse back. They saw the cat raise its paw as if to beckon to them, so they followed the cat to the temple. The priest welcomed them in out of the rain and gave them tea. One of the samurai, Lord Li, was impressed by the priest, and later returned for regular visits. The lord and his family gave money to the temple, and it was never poor again. The story of the faithful cat, who brought luck and prosperity to the poor temple, spread across the land. Soon the first Maneki-neko statue appeared, and eventually the lucky statue spread from Japan to China and to North America.

I thought I might like to write a story for kids involving a statue of Maneki-neko (and perhaps a cat spirit who inhabits the statue), so on my trip to Japan I kept my eyes open for Maneki-neko statues and for real cats. My quest took me from a little antique store in the ancient town of Seki-cho, where the store owner showed me two Maneki-neko figures from the Meiji period (about 1900), to the backstreets of Tokyo, where a tiny shop was filled with lucky cats and real cats lounged up and down a market stairway, to a town beside the ancient shrine of Ise, where a giant stone Maneki-neko stood outside another store filled with lucky cats. (Hello Kitty, or Kitty-chan as she is called in Japan, was also in evidence.)

After all this, the story I ended up starting to write is not about cats (although I may write the Maneki-neko story yet). Instead, it is about (or partly about) two other things I found myself looking out for in Japan: crows and manga. I will tell the you about the crows next.