Lingua Esoterica: A huge debate was sparked today in the teachers room by my enquiries into animal "counters". See, the Japanese have a different kinda suffix thing that goes on the end of their numbers to indicate the kind of thing you're counting, and these "counters" can be quite obscure, even to my native-tongued counterparts. Take for instance, the lowly rabbit. Normally, small animals are counted by "hiki". Four dogs are "yon hiki" (right?). Rabbits, however, are counted by "wa", a counter usually used for birds. The reason for this it seems lies in Japan's Buddhist history. Apparently, for many of that faith, eating four legged creatures was a no-no, a terrible inconvenience for the meat-loving populace. The solution? Yeah, rabbits count as birds.

I was reminded by this conversation of our many names for animal groups, and found this web site to be most efficatious for discourse on the matter. And its funny, too!