Today started out like a normal day, but by the end of it I was taking part in a Japanese funeral ceremony and cooking homemade om-rice.
When I got to school everyone was running around in a panic, and I very quickly found out that Mr. Kimura’s (one of our English teachers) mother had passed away in the night. It wasn’t unexpected, but it threw everyone for a loop. Mr. Kimura was not coming in for the week, and everyone was busy trying to figure out how they could cover his classes and finish up his final exam grading.
Mr. Hayashi said that there was a ceremony that night after work, and he invited me to come along. I reluctantly agreed – I wasn’t sure if anyone would want me there… wherever I go I tend to get a strange reaction, and I didn’t want to disrupt the ceremony.
After school Mr. Hayashi and I left early and rushed off to pick up Miss Kageyama. Then we drove to Akashi, and found the funeral home. I haven’t been to a funeral home in a long time, but it wasn’t anything like I expected. There were three floors of funerals going on, and in each was a gigantic shrine with a picture of the deceased at the center. The shrine was beautiful, and Mr. Kimura and his family were sitting to the side next to it. I was expecting to go in and say a few words to Mr. Kimura, but Mr. Hayashi said that we had to go through the ritual.
I remember seeing something about this in my JET handbook, which was sitting uselessly in my apartment 20 kilometers away. There is a whole procedure that you go through when doing this, and they were pretty strict sounding on the details. If we stood around any longer, I would have gotten scared, but Mr. Hayashi kept things moving. With a sage nod of the head he said “Do what I do”, and then he walked into the memorial area. Miss Kageyama and I exchanged glances, and we followed him in there. Gulp.
At the front of the room we bowed to the shrine, and then held our hands together in front of our bodies, kind of like a Buddha does. Then we turned to the family and bowed to them. They all bowed their heads back.
As I describe this, try to keep in mind that I am always a second or two behind Mr. Hayashi and Miss Kageyama, who have the routine down.
We turned back to the shrine, and in front of each of us was a little altar that had incense burning. We took a pinch of sand (or ash?) from one side, and then sprinkled a tiny bit on the other side of the altar. Then we took some incense from the side we just sprinkled, and dropped that over the slowly burning incense. Then we did the thing with the hands again, bowed at the shrine, and then turned to the family and bowed to them again. This time they all stood up and bowed, and then we made our exit.
Mr. Hayashi was eager to get out of there. The official ceremony started at six o’clock, and if we were present then, we would have to stay for the whole thing, and that meant at least a couple of hours. Also, formal dress was expected, and we were all in our work clothes still. We blitzed out of there, going down three floors, and out the door just as some of the other teachers were coming in. They asked if we were sticking around, but Mr. Hayashi was already halfway down the block toward the car. I told them that we had already seen Mr. Kimura, and we had to run.
I wouldn’t have minded staying for the entire ceremony, but I wasn’t quite dressed for it. Sometimes I think that Mr. Hayashi sometimes rushes through things that he considers boring, and doesn’t remember that every little thing for me is brand new. Hopefully next time we do something like this I can stick around and observe a little more.
Mr. Hayashi dropped me off at my place, and I made up something that I find every once in a while at cafeterias and restaurants here in Japan. It’s called om-rice. It’s really just a rice omelet. The rice inside is fried just a little, and there is some ketchup in the mix. I made one with a little bacon and sauteed mushrooms, and it was delicious. It was a lot of work to make, but I was very satisfied with the outcome.
Tomorrow I’m going into Kobe after work to see the “Luminaries”. It’s kind of Kobe’s answer to a Christmas light extravaganza. It is being held right near Chinatown, so I’m hoping that I can have dinner from one of those food tables on the streets – everything looked delicious last time I was there, but I couldn’t eat anything then. Tomorrow is payback time.
