I was talking with an elderly man, who turned out to be a fisherman. He told me stories from childhood in a seaside town on the coast of Setonaikai, an inland sea in Western Japan with superb landscapes (if only it had been left untouched).
I was taking notes. He said something like this. "When we were children there was no distinction between work and play. We dived all day long catching fish, shellfish, sea urchins, and such. But the sea never ceased to amaze us. Whenever we encounter something marvelous, after we surfaced we said among oursleves: Katapulanah kuruyah. Nobody knew the meaning of these words. Then after half a century, one day I hit upon the origin of the expression. It probably means: Katasumuri no planetarium kuruyo, or the planetarium for snails is coming."
Strange as it may sound, I was fascinated by the etymological explanation and got overly excited. I wanted to tell it to an anthropologist friend of mine. Then at the next moment the friend was there sitting with us and agreed it was such a wonderful story.
