Nintendo Word Play

It was a long tiring weekend. So I went where I usually go in order to relieve aching muscles and tensed nerves in Japan, the local onsen (hot spring spa). There I sat in different pools of water, Goldilock-like in my pursuit of the perfect pool. “No, not this one, it’s too hot. And no, not this one, its freezing cold”. When I settled on the reclining pool with the jets that gently massage your feet, I happened to see something peculiar.

There was a small green frog, precariously dangling on the top of the window. He was outside and it was a two story building. Somehow he had managed to get his right hand caught on the web of a spider. He spun and writhed as he tried to free himself from the web.

Let’s call him Joey, Joey the tree frog. How he got there in the first place, I have no idea. He must have been the son of a noble tree frog king in Africa, a king that was exiled from his land. With the king’s prospects and honor dashed away, he died a broken visage of his former self, spiraling fast into the abyss with dreams of ascending to the throne once more.

In the shadow of the hopes that eluded him, Joey traveled abroad searching for answers for himself, seeking a new life and a new destiny. With aspirations fit for a prince, he managed to climb to the top of the onsen and possibly steal an ensnared fly from the grips of the spider’s web. But his ambitions were too lofty, thought he was the bull frog of the jungle. There, hanging by a thread he desperately fought, wasting away his energy, trying in vain to escape. But his struggle for freedom would also mean the imminent possibility a worst fate. His fall from the top of the window would send him careening down to the hard depths below.

I left the onsen. I don’t know what happened to Joey. My body was soothed, my fingers little dried fruits, and my questions unsolved.