I strolled into one of my schools the other day and right as I am slipping into my crocs (they don't sell slippers my size in this country) my principal comes dashing up to me, "Jesse, have you seen this picture?" I had no idea what he was talking about and was terribly confused.
Lets set the stage briefly first. This time of year is what can best be described as fall festival time. The few days prior to this all the first and second graders at this particular school were asked to draw pictures about their emotions on the festivities. Many pictures featured kids winning prizes such as fish and candy from carnival games or depicted scenes of the clash between Yabu and "farmers" or even the Yabu themselves scaring the crap out of the kids.
What the hell is a Yabu?
A Yabu in short is what looks like a bad spirit or entity, but in fact they are more of custodians to the higher powers. They don't much like visitors. Now every year there is a procession where what I have assumed to be farmers try to get grain and or other things to the temple as offerings. They Yabu wish to prevent that. The Yabu get sticks, and crazy suits with big rope on the back... and really cool red scary masks. Oh, and they like to hit things, people, children, dogs, etc with the sticks. Anyways, probably something that would really scare the crap out of a small kid (and possibly even adults). I am definitely missing the finer points here, but that does not matter just so long as you get what a Yabu is.
The picture was drawn by a second grade boy, Yusuke.
The first thing I noticed when I looked at the picture were bodies strewn everywhere around the center and in the distance (he is actually a pretty good artist and a fairly complex level of depth was present) and that those bodies in fact were Yabu corpses. In the center stood a great bearded man much larger than the Yabu. His arms were over his head and in his hands another Yabu was being torn in half.... brutal! Between this giant bearded mans legs were several children safely seated on the ground. They were clutching the big guys legs in order to be "safe". At the bottom of the picture read something to the effect (from what we mutually sussed/translated into workable English) of "My nightmare medicine". Deep man, deeeeeeep. Oh, and there was a label of the giant bearded man, "Jesse Sensei". HAHAHAHAHA!
I died laughing on the spot and asked if I could make a copy of the drawing. In turn the principle chuckled, put the photo in his pocket and walked away. Damnit I wanted that! He was absent this week so I will try again next week to get it and pop up here on the blog.
So in closing:
Jesse > Yabu.
