Scared of Colonel Sanders...

Hana HATES mannequins, statues, or any large fake character. Hana has very few fears so this strikes me as odd. We can put her to bed at night, leave her alone in her room in the pitch dark, and she's fine. Most loud noises don't seem to bother her, even a typhoon going on outside and all kinds of loud noises in the house didn't faze her. She IS scared of animals if she gets too close too, but this extreme fear of amnnequins is so interesting. It all started with the huge mannequin of Colonel Sanders outside of KFC. The first time she encountered him a while back she clung to Daddy in fear and has become more and more tramatized by him ever since. Even when we are simply taking a road that goes by a KFC restaurant she begins to get upset and yells "no, no, kowai (scary) no, no".

The other thing that is really interesting is that she clearly knows evil things are scary too, without us ever having taught her this. Obviously frightening LOOKING things make her scared, but she also is afraid of small Buddhist statues, the things around temples and shrines, and so forth.
Recently at a friends house she saw a butsudan (the small shrine to the dead inside some people's homes, pictured right) and she would not go anywhere near it. It is simply a decorative wooden cabinet with a picture of the deceased nearby, sometimes a statues inside, some candles burning, and a place for "worshippers" to kneel and light incense and pray. She hated it, and wouldn't even go into the room where the butsudan was. We were driving near her grandparents house recently and there is a street corner that has a small Buddhist alter with a stone statue inside. She began to point and say "kowai, kowai (scary)" when we were near that alter. We later asked her grandmother is she had taught her that this alter is evil, and "ba-ba" said "no, but everytime we go near there she tells me it is scary."

Her little spirit knows!

Children are amazing...