Magic Kettle: Story Planning Week 7

Raccoon Dog of Nogeyama Zoo by Toshihiro Gamo. Found on wikimedia.

The Magic Kettle Story Planning
More detailed notes on the story can be found here.
This story comes from The Crimson Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1903).
A man lived on the side of a mountain and found a kettle after hearing a weird noise. It was a kettle he had never seen before, but he needed a new one so he cleaned it and began using it. It turned into a creature on the fire, running around his house. He called a neighbor and they caught the creature in a trunk. They called for a salesman to get sell the creature. When they opened it back up, it was a kettle again and the salesman bought the kettle. It kept getting heavier as he moved away from he house. In the night, the kettle transformed into the creature. The salesman decided to create a show out of it and became rich. He returned the kettle and a fee for renting it to the man who originally found it. They all lived happily ever after.

I could move the location to Tokyo. Rather than a small village on a mountain, it takes place in a large city in modern day. Tokyo is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, so perhaps something weird like this could happen and no now would notice, they way people tend to ignore strange things in big cities or explain them away as people being weird. Maybe the kettle isn't a kettle anymore. I could be a laptop or another element of technology that transforms into a raccoon dog. The tanuki featured in the story are more commonly known as Japanese raccoon dogs and are adorable. They are used as an absentminded, shapeshifting, trickster in folktales. Rather than being part of a freak show or a similar side show, the narrator could use the item to launch his career as a magician. People keep trying to disprove his transformation, but the truth is he has no idea how it happens.