Asakiyume mita

In the articles I looked at, no one said explicitly why there are frogs on the manhole covers, but at least one of the made an off-the-cuff reference to the association between frogs and water--which is interesting, because I think if someone had said to me, "Name a creature associated with water that we could use as a manhole cover," I probably would have said fish. But frog strikes me as a better choice--salamander would also be good--because its amphibious nature puts it more in our terrestrial world than fish. Amphibians are such great liminal creatures!

Re: Pete Seeger's Frog Went a-Courting--I picked it to listen to for this entry :-) I love the song. Have you ever heard Sam Hinton's version? That's the one I heard in my childhood--on the very album featured as the image for that Youtube video. I would take it out of the library and listen to it.

I really loved this picturebook of it, too.