Bunny

(Translated by Saya) 

When I told this to a friend, he froze for a second, and then burst out laughing...
But to me, it was a quite creepy experience.
This story involves my daughter, who turned three last June.

My daughter has some imaginery friends, just like a lot of other children do.
She often talks about "Panda san *1,"Tanuki san *2" and "Bunny san."
"Panda san is still a baby," "It was Tankui san who made a mess," she would say, but there was something about "Bunny san" that set it apart from the other two.

After some pondering, I realised that her description of "Bunny san" was often more detailed and specific than that of of the other ones.
"Bunny san is much older than me, so she can use chopsticks very well."
"Bunny san is looking at the flowers on the balcony now."

One time, my daughter was tinkering on the piano.
She did that often and I didn't pay much attention to it - until my ears caught a certain tune.
Do...re..mi...Do...re...mi....
It was the Tulip song.*3

She didn't have a piano teacher, and neither I nor my wife had ever taught her to play it.
I asked her how she came to learn it, and she replied, "Bunny san taught it to me."


As you can imagine, I felt creeped out.
I asked her again,
"What does your friend Bunny san look like?"
"Well...she has long ears."
That was not hard to quess.
"OK...so does she look like this?"
I showed her an illustration of a rabbit.
"No."
"Alright then...how about this one?"
I showed her a picture of a real rabbit.
"No, she isn't like that."

I asked her many more questions, and she tried her best to answer them, but she didn't yet know many words, and it was hard for me to grasp what she was telling me.
My daughter gradually became irritated and I had to give up questioning her further on that day.
But one thing became clear: the bunny was black, not white.

A few days later, my daughter came running to me excitedly.
"This one! This one!"
She yelled, clutching a magazine in her hand.
"What is it?"
She pointed at a picture in the magazine.
"This is Bunny san."
"What...? Are you sure this is Bunny san?"
"Yep," she beamed with satisfaction.

It was a picture of a smiling bunny girl in a man's magazine.

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*1 San - A Japanese honorific, equivalent to Mr., Mrs.,Miss,etc. (Wikipedia) 
*2 Tanuki - Japanese raccoon dog (Wikipedia)
*3 Tulip song - A famous Japanese nursery song (Youtube)