1. I miss American food. So when I biked to the mall yesterday, I fixed that with pancakes and a stop at an import food store. I also shredded my foot on the kickstand of my borrowed bike. It's a little bit different and I blame that for the unexpected collision. Ow. It was supposed to go up. It didn't.
2. Ogawa invited me to a festival at the family's shrine. I had to wear my new fancy dress I gave into buying (oh, darn) and we hauled 8 people in the car up into the mountains to the shrine. Pictures weren't allowed so I have none. Again the basic rules existed, no shoes, and sitting with your legs crossed is a no-no. After we all sat inside for a while and people piled in, they served us matcha tea and sweet bean cakes (not... as good as other things I've tried).
One of the cool parts I liked was everyone had to sign their name in a book and they turned it sideways for me to write English, but I got to tell them, "No no, I can write katakana!" Katakana is the Japanese alphabet for foreign words. So with a black brush, I got to write it vertically. I felt pretty cool. Yep.
Then the ceremony began and we all sat Japanese style, bowed a few times, and sang behind 5 different priests. Each had beautiful robes on and one was actually English. That sort of blew my mind. Then after an hour of daydreaming, I mean singing, we got up and gave roses in a line. It was like communion without the wine and wafer. Then more singing and playing traditional instruments before one priest came out and told a story. However, my Japanese isn't that conversational (I love how Ogawa tells everyone I'm fluent, I must fake it really well) so I tried to just enjoy the scenery and keep the blood flowing in my legs. Right before he finished every bone in my neck cracked in a line and I *know* people heard it. Ena, the daughter, tried not to laugh. Thank goodness everyone was in mid bow when I re-aligned my neck. Surprise! And yes, still alive.
Afterward, we received gifts (a peach from the top of the tree, a sweater?? a box of rice cakes, tea, and I got cherries since I am youthful). Obento lunches followed with surprise foods (Oh.... hello something made of tofu! What are you??) and then we were basically done. It was also swimmingly humid today and I don't want to leave my fan's field of airflow.
It was a really cool experience and I thought about how Japan sits on over 2,000 years of culture and what do we have? about 400 years and then we have to trace it back to somewhere else. You can just see it in the art everywhere and attitude. This is just how we do things We just have tatami mats on the floor. We just build beautiful roofs on all buildings, we don't tear down old things, we still preserve old ways of life in this crazy technology-based era. It's something to admire and hopefully, maybe we will start to preserve our past too. I understand it's hard with sooo many different cultures in the U.S. but hey, that would be something unique I wouldn't mind : )
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