Inari

Very little ( 1000 population) city in northern Finland, Lapland. Lives on tourists and reindeermen.

Japanese Mythology:
Kami, of the Shinto pantheon.

Originally Lord/Lady of the Rice Harvest, then later (11th century-Gregorian calendar) Ianri takes up the added association of a fox god.

Also: Inari, noun (Japanese): Flavoured, boiled rice.

See Also:

• Kitsune
• Inarijinja

Inari is the god of rice and foxes, and is depicted in mythology as a deity that (IIRC) has white foxes as messengers. And yes, there have been - and, according to recent sightings, now again are - arctic foxes in Lapland! Coincidence? I think not.

(No, I know only a little Japanese, so this isn't going to help. A friend of mine who noticed this correlation too knows Japanese but not Finnish that well. Any help for, er, comparative linguistics?)

Well, I never said they'd be too widely spread, I've lived for long time in Kuhmo, yet I've never seen a wolf. =) Finnish nature is a myth.

I find it strange how Japanese written in western charmap (a-z) actually pronounces almost exactly like that of Finnish. Based on my observations of translated and original-language subtitles, it would seem that except for some tricks (ie. 'w', 'n'), I, Finnish, actually could pronounce Japanese correctly, not the proper places of stress or tune, but otherwise.

Now, is this because of WWWWolf's conspiracy theory?

Or because Finnish comforms well to the generic text <=> speech translation RFC and Japanese, since its original written form was uncompatible with our charmap (you know, all those mysterious runes), had artificial our keymap <=> speech translation/pronounciation map created, which was, of course, created so that it conformed with the RFC well?

P.S. I hope that made sense.

P.P.S. WWWWolf, I live in inari (jaslak is my E1-user whose password I forgot) and I've never seen an (living, non-stuffed) arctic fox.

Inari is fried tofu nigiri. A small sleeve (much like a rectangular pita) of fried tofu has sushi rice inserted into it. Many sushi restaurants will also sprinkle sesame seeds onto the rice.

Noder's Note: Inari is a nice filler during a sushi dinner. Its flavor is very subtle, so it should only be dipped very lightly into your soy sauce/wasabi mix.