"Rabbits Are Delicious" - Misheard Lyrics - "Furusato" 故郷 - Hometown.

There is a song that I heard on this documentary about Fukushima. Since I am Japanese (Japanese-Canadian), the lyrics touched home. Even though Japan is not where I was born; even the Nikkeijin who were born outside of Japan hears a siren-call to Japan, the land of their ancestors.

The English Lyrics are as follows:

"I chased rabbits in those mountains
I fished in that stream
I still dream now and then about those days as a child
How I long for and miss my hometown
How are my father and mother?
Are my old friends okay?
Whenever it is rainy and windy
I recall my happy childhood in my hometown
Some day when I’ve done what I set out to do,
I will return to what used to be my home The mountains are green there in my hometown."

The Japanese Lyrics in Romaji (romanized Japanese) are as follows:

"Usagi oishi kano yama
Kobuna tsurishi kano kawa
Yume wa ima mo megurite
Wasuregataki furusato.
Ikani imasu chichi-haha,
tsutsuganashi ya tomogaki,
ame ni kaze ni tsuketemo,
omoiizuru furusato.
Kokorozashi o hatashite,
itsunohinika kaeran,
yama wa aoki furusato,
mizu wa kiyoki furusato."



It is one of my favorite songs and one of these days, I do hope to get a chance to visit Japan. I do wish to go to Kyoto and pay my respects to my ancestors and to bring a part of my father's legacyback home to Japan.

For the people who don't get the titular joke. Oi-shi (chasing) is also pronounced similarly to the word oishi which is "delicious", so periodically it confuses the heck out of people when they think they heard "Rabbits are delicious in those mountains". I've never tasted rabbit meat...so I wouldn't know.

Here are a few other versions that are favorites:

Il Divo singing in Japan one year after Fukushima.


Japanese Self Defence Force Concert

This is so poignant as every time the Self-Defence Forces deploy to places like Afghanistan (where Japanese soldiers have been captured by the Taliban), they don't know if they'll see their hometown again. So this is especially fitting


No matter what, it speaks of the love and the longing that Japanese feel for their hometown or country. In my case it would be Kyoto, where my ancestors, my uncles and my cousins lived and worked.