In Which I Nearly Choke On My Yogurt From Laughing Too Hard

During lunch today, the kids were talking about their grandparents, and F told us that her grandpa had died when she was a baby.

"What's died?" M wanted to know.

My coworker, R, looked at me. "Do they have the same concept of heaven in Japanese culture?" she asked me in a whisper, as we both scrambled to find a way to explain death in simple terms to a four-year-old whose mother tongue is not English.

"It means he's no longer with us," R tried.

F, whose family is Christian, clarified, "He's in heaven."

"You mean he went up?" M asked, pointing at the ceiling.

"That's right," I answered, smiling at the thought of F's grandfather hanging around the second floor.

"He died and now he's with Jesus," F added.

M thought about this for a moment, looking intrigued. "And with Santa?"

*

R and I had a good chuckle over that, and decided that there could be much worse things than finding out that the afterlife is Santa's workshop. It made me wonder, though, whether M (and, by extension, the other kids, and maybe Japanese kids in general) think of Santa as some sort of ghost. As far as I know, there's no real equivalent to Santa Claus (or the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny) in Japanese culture, but there are so many gods and spirits inhabiting the country that they probably don't need them.