Today’s book is “Nashi Tori Kyoudai”
Nashi=Asian Pears
Tori=To pick
Kyoudai=brothers (siblings)
So I translated this as “The Brothers who Picked Pears.”
A sick mother sends her sons out to fetch pears for her. One by one, they meet an old woman-demon. The first two brothers are swallowed by a sea monster (which sort of reminded me of “Jonah and the Whale.”) Finally the third brother saves his brothers and they bring pears home to their mother.
As always with these folk tales, this had a lot of dialect. Lots of words that I won’t need in real life or on tests, like “gyoutan” (gourd). This isn’t one of the more famous folk tales–I had trouble finding it in English on the internet, but here it is:
http://www.attaka-furusato.com/minwa/gb/yamagata/naranashi.html
I love that the story is from Yamagata. I hadn’t heard this one before, but it is similar to other fairy/folk tales from other countries.
Thanks for posting about it!
Thanks, Helen! I think the Farting Bride folktale was from Fukushima….LOL