Japan Lite Archives

When I moved into my house, the grandfather's "ihai" (ancestral tablet) was still in the "butsudan" (family shrine) and stayed there for years. I always enjoyed leaving sake, fruit and other offerings out for his return at Obon.

When the grandmother died in February, I thought the son would also leave the ihai tablet in the Butsudan, and I was looking forward to putting out green tea and rice on the altar for the "obachan" in the mornings.

But the son took both the grandfather and the grandmother's ihai back to his apartment in the city. I had missed my chance to care for a spirit. And no one would come back to my house for Obon, either, since the spirits return to where the ihai is.

But, as luck had it, my neighbor's little dog died the other evening. I don't mean to say that I was not sad that the dog died, I was just happy that I wouldn't have to walk it anymore when my neighbor was gone. It's one of those dogs that you have to lug around on the end of a leash like a ball and chain.

Furthermore, the dog would get extremely excited whenever I'd go to my neighbor's house. Perhaps you have had the experience of having a dog hump your leg. Well, that never happened. Thanks to Japanese-style houses, where you sit on the floor, the little dog used to come over to me and hump my arm. All the while panting in my face while my nostrils filled with dog breath. So you see, although I do love dogs, and although this dog loved me, I did not love this dog.

But the other night at 10 p.m., Kazuko came over to say that her dog had uttered her last burp and expired on the carpet. Well, it was too dark to bury the dog, so we pondered how to keep the dog "fresh" until the morning.

I kept hoping she was not going to ask me to store this dog in my refrigerator. You see, I have a big refrigerator that is usually empty except for beer and chocolate, so Kazuko often stores extra vegetables and fish in it. So, to make sure there was no way she could possibly ask to put her dog in my refrigerator, and to avoid the embarrassment of turning her down, I offered my refrigerator instead. "Hairu?" I said ("Think it'll fit?").

But Kazuko wisely turned down the offer, perhaps thinking I might nibble on the dog for breakfast. After all, the word "hotdog" had a whole new meaning now.

Instead, Kazuko retrieved a Styrofoam fish box and we filled it with ice from my refrigerator. We left the dog in her house, on ice, overnight.

In the morning, the dog was indeed still "fresh." When we finished burying it, Kazuko put out a small dish of water on the grave and sunk a vase into the ground, which I filled with fresh cut flowers from my garden.

I used to have mixed feelings about the dog, but no more. Now I love the dog. Every day, I put flowers from my garden on the little dog's grave. I'm happy that I finally have a spirit to take care of. And just in time for Obon!

A few more hints. We'll also need umbrellas, not for the rain, but in case we should have to leave the tent in our swimsuits. We'll also need large, blowup animals. Have you guessed where we're going yet? Yes, the beach! And we're going Japanese style.

You see, going to the beach is no simple matter in Japan. It's an event that requires hours of planning and is so exhausting that going to the beach has become a once-a-year event. No wonder adults look back on their childhood trips to the beach with such nostalgia -- they were such rare events.

Where in the West we consider a swimsuit and a beach towel sufficient to go to the beach for a day, in Japan, the idea is to take as many things as possible.

It might even be merely an excuse to clean out the storage area of the house, which as far as I can guess is on top of the roof next to the satellite dish. Where else could they store those plastic, foldup picnic tables and eight-pole "sun tents" that everyone seems to have?

Getting onto a ferry to get to a beach on an island is no excuse not to bring all that stuff. As a matter of fact, since we're going to have to walk a kilometer to the beach after we get off the ferry, let's bring more stuff! We're going to earn this day at the beach, darn it!

It's a bit of a hard schedule, but please follow these rules. If you follow them closely, you'll be very glad you went to the beach, got it over with, and won't have to go again till next year.

Rule No. 1: Rather than using that ferry time to admire the beauty of the surrounding sea or to teach the kids about the different islands from the deck, you should be inside the ferry inflating your blowup toys. You should have as many large blowup toys as possible that take up any extra space in the already crowded ferry. If you have an inflatable ring (and everyone should), wear it when getting off the ferry for protection from the crowds.

Rule No. 2: Once we set up the tent on the beach, we will never move from that spot! No walking down the beach or exploring the other offerings. And for God's sake, don't go perusing the restaurants and parasol rental booths only to find out we didn't need to bring all that stuff.

Rule No. 3: Japanese people don't use sunscreen until after they're burned, so save yourself the expense of having to buy sunscreen by using a regular rain umbrella if you find you must walk in your swimsuit from the tent to the toilet. You did pack umbrellas, didn't you?

Ok, ready to leave? Go over that list again. Do we have everything? Wait a minute. Did anyone look at the weather forecast? What? A 10 percent chance of rain? Oh well then, let's stay home instead. After all, we can always go to the beach next year.

All I can say is that as long as there is humor out there, people will laugh. And as long as I am an English teacher in Japan, I will police the language and hand out violations to English abusers. After all, if we ignore Japanese English, thus accepting its, ahem, "peculiarities," where does one draw the line?

Is it OK that one of my students recommends a certain cafe for its "strawberry snort cake?" Hmm. Another student wrote that she went to Sapporo and ate famous "Sapporo needles!" Oh, but she's just a student, you say. But no! She's planning on becoming a translator. And such spelling mistakes slip into tourist brochures all the time. Call me a stickler, but if the Sapporo Visitors Bureau starts advertising its needles, stomachs from all over the world are going to be in stitches.

Even if they get the spelling of "noodles" right, other budding translators in my class are recommending people "meet noodles." I daresay that most foreigners have never considered how they would introduce themselves to a Japanese noodle. This was definitely not covered in "Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day."

Meanwhile, my students remind me that these days many young Japanese couples are shunning weddings and are opting, instead, to get married at the City Hole. That must be a darn big hole! Another student has one message for the world: Stop ear pollution.

These mistakes can be easily remedied with one or two proper letters. C'mon, give the English language a break -- it only has 26 letters! The Japanese language has two alphabets with 46 letters each, plus 5,000 kanji characters. I'm not asking for the entire language here, just a proper letter.

While I let students off with minor infractions and a small red mark on their papers, I have much stiffer penalties for more serious English violations.

For starters, I would give a harsh penalty to the T-shirt company that jolted me awake on the train the other day by a young girl wearing a shirt that had "Morning pussy" across her chest. Now, that poor girl is headed for trouble. Obscene language is screened from magazines and newspapers all the time. Just because it appears on a T-shirt doesn't make it any less offensive. Innocent mistakes are one thing, but companies should have more integrity than to just splash words on T-shirts without considering the risk they are putting the wearers at. They are making fools of the precious customers they depend so much on. I would give that company five years in prison.

Second, it is not OK to have toddlers running around in brand-name clothing bearing visible labels that say "Lusty." Unless they change their name to "Rusty" or start hiding their tags inside their garments, I would give them the maximum sentence for encouraging child pornography.

Lastly, I would give 10 brownie points to the T-shirt company that made the shirt with drawings of cute little hippos dancing to the words "Hippo Spirits." For sure, we could all use a little more hippo spirit in our lives.

See? Not all Japanese English is bad. But those who openly abuse the English language should be made to realize it.

And now I close with one message for the world. As one of my students put it so succinctly, "I hope for word peace forever."

"No, no, she is not Britney Spears!" I would say about the little Britney look-alike in the front row wearing a low-waisted miniskirt and a cropped top to show off her pierced navel. But Cosmo would ignore me.

"No, no, that student is not Mariah Carey!" I would claim as my little Mariah, with the backless shirt affixed to her body with just a few strings, settled into the pouty-mouth position. But Cosmo would merely continue setting up those electric fans they use to make a model's hair blow back and her nipples protrude.

Then Cosmo would be pleasantly surprised when one of my favorite students, who always wears pink, made her classic late entrance into the classroom. I'm pretty sure she's chronically late due to morning shopping sprees. Her clothes are always so new, they look like she has just taken the tags off moments ago in the school bathroom. Yesterday, she had on a white lacy bra with straps designed to fall off the shoulders and rest there. Or maybe she just hadn't had time to adjust them yet. After all, the time it takes to get from the school bathroom to the classroom is pretty short. With her entrance, the Cosmo camera-crew-turned-paparazzi would swarm around her, snapping photos of everything from her lacy bra straps to her just-purchased pink Cecil McBee bag. She wouldn't miss a beat, though--she has been waiting for this moment her whole life.

"For God's sake, this is a university classroom!" I would yell, and they would throw me out. The students, that is -- for ruining their opportunity to become famous. Meanwhile, Cosmo would be handing out bikinis for the next classroom shoot.

But until this happens, my students will have to be content with just trying to be a little sexier than the day before. And with the current fashions, this is no problem. Fashion has come to the rescue most notably in the brassiere department. These days all bras are the self-thrusting type that force small breasts outward like two bullets. This is because they have "underwire" cups, named after the metal hardware, probably chain-link fence, installed to push the breasts up until they create a shelf. When you consider that these bras also have to support cell phones that some students store in their cleavage, you can see that the underwire bra has a big job to do. Mr. Universe would be put to shame.

I'm sure some of my students use remote control to give an extra lift at lunch time, just after the scheduled afternoon eyelash re-crimping. Heck, if your eyelashes can fall by midday, you can be sure that other parts of your body are doing the same.

Since there is no end to the number of things one can do to improve the female body, personal grooming has gone public in order to have enough time to fit it all in. On the bus the other day, for example, I saw one of my students plucking the hairs off the back of her hands.

After all, she would hate to miss that Cosmo opportunity.

Recently, a customs broker called me from Osaka to tell me my cargo shipment had arrived. He said he was figuring the customs tax of the contents of the shipment but was confused by some of the language used on the packing list. This didn't surprise me, as the packing list is written in English, a universal language, and the broker speaks only Japanese, a language used only by a small East Asian nation and a handful of nonnative speakers.

So I was appointed translator, and we went through the English list one by one in order to determine a customs tax for each product.

"What is a sarong?" he started.

"It's a piece of cloth that is used to wrap around the body in most Asian countries, but in Japan, for some reason, people hang it on their walls."

"Clothes on the walls?" he said. "This is very complicated."

"Yes."

"So, which is it, clothing or a wall hanging?"

"Indeed!" I agreed, although I really wanted to say, "Whichever one has the lesser tax." Still perplexed, he then asked, "Is it 'orimono?' "

Now, apparently this word has several different definitions, but the only one I was familiar with is the one used in women's clinics by gynecologists qualified to ask women very personal questions. Let's just say that 'orimono' is an uncountable noun that I daresay they could tax without measurement in beakers. Sure that sarongs could not be measured so, I said, "No, not orimono." It was only later after looking it up in the dictionary that I found the word also means "textiles."

Surely wary of my translation skills at that point, he quickly moved on to the next category: bedding. "Can you explain 'bed covers?' "

"Oh yes," I said, aware that bedding carries a high 16 percent customs tax and that it would be to my advantage to leave interpretation open to a different product with a lower tax. "These are bedspreads with a black-and-white cow print design," I said. "Holstein," I added for good measure, hoping to regain his confidence by impressing him with my familiarity with my own products.

"I see," he said. "Knit or woven?"

"One hundred percent cotton. Stitched," I said, hoping that answered his question. He seemed satisfied and moved on to the next category within bedding: pillows. "These go with the bedding," I explained.

"What kind of pillows?" he asked. "They're decorative pillows that go on the top of the bed. There are three types, each shaped like a different part of the cow: one cow head pillow, one cow tail pillow and one udder pillow. (Since there is no word for "udder" in Japanese, I had to say "cow nipples.")

"These are pillows used by humans?" He seemed shocked.

"This is children's bedding," I explained, "so children can play with the arrangement of the pillows on top of the cow print bedspread and make an abstract cow using the pillows."

"What is inside the pillows?" He seemed suspicious.

"All natural fibers. Except for the cow nipples, which have small synthetic balls inside to make the nipples squishy." I heard nothing but the sound of sucking through teeth on the other end of the phone. "It's supposed to be educational," I added.

"We'll call them toys," he said, which automatically qualified them for a lower tax.

I was very relieved I didn't have to go into any more details about whether cow nipples qualify as toys. I guess some things are better left up to the Braille method.

To me, what the Japanese mean by their language being "vague" is that the reality is often very different from what you are told. On my planet, the United States, we call this lying. But in good old Japan, it's disguised as flattery, vagueness or just plain saving face. As a result, you are often told what sounds good, rather than what the truth is.

Take, for instance, what I was told the other day when I received an e-mail from the local International Center: "Dear Amy, I know you are very busy but would you please find time to talk to Mr. A who owns a local stone factory? He is looking for an English teacher for a student friend who needs help with the English in her law courses."

I called Mr. A even though I knew I didn't have time to teach English. But maybe I could recommend someone else. We decided to have an "uchiawase" meeting at a hotel coffee shop.

There I met the "law student," who is actually a full time OL ("office lady") taking a law course by correspondence. She doesn't need English for this, she says. As a matter of fact, she doesn't want to study English at all. She wants to pick up English conversation through osmosis -- by having foreign friends!

As her new foreign friend, I assured her that she would learn English by just being around me and catching the phrases in a butterfly net. With this established, I was relieved that I could now go home and separate my garbage for "bunbetsu no hi" ("separated garbage day") the next morning.

But then the small table in front of us began to spin with the force of the uchiawase vortex. No, this would not be the end. As a matter of fact, this would be the beginning of a very long evening.

At the suggestion of Mr. A, our uchiawase became mobile and we moved upstairs to a "teppanyaki" restaurant on the 11th floor for dinner. While admiring the night view over dinner, I threw out a couple of English phrases, which the OL missed completely with her butterfly net.

We drank the standard: beer, sake and wine, all in unique intervals.

Mr. A told me he has a trading company in China. This was good news because I have a business importing cows into Japan. Not real cows, but cow merchandise such as udder key chains, cow head cushions and black-and-white cow-print bedcovers. I always need cows.

By now, the alcohol was taking effect and I started mooing. The OL caught this phrase and started mooing too!

Mr. A got on his cell phone and started speaking Chinese. When he finished, he turned to me and said, "We can get you T-shirts with cows on them!" We all mooed.

Our table was now lowing, and people were beginning to notice. The waiter asked if we needed anything. We did: More drinks!

We went on to talk about many other things that evening besides cows, although we still mooed between drinks. Finally, Mr. A paid the tab, which amounted to quite a bit of moolah, and we made a date for the next uchiawase. The mooing OL wanted to help sell cow merchandise, and Mr. A promised to send me a sample of the cow T-shirt within the next few days.

We let out a final group moo and parted: the "law student," the "local factory owner" and the "English teacher," our identities hidden behind titles designed to make us sound better.

Indeed, Japanese is a vague language! Moooo.

On my planet, the United States, printing up advertising is a simple matter of walking into the nearest print shop, choosing from an array of samples and comparing them to a price list that varies depending on how many postcards you want printed. After you decide what you want, it takes a week to 10 days to have the order filled.

Not Japan. After 10 days, I was still in the throes of "uchiawase." These face-to-face business meetings are the prerequisite to doing any business with the Japanese.

It started with an introduction by a mutual friend. Then I talked to the printer to set up an appointment. "I can stop by your office today," I offered. "Oh no, our office is very hard to find," he said, and suggested meeting at a hotel coffee shop instead.

We met at the hotel, ordered coffee and got straight down to business. I showed him the design I wanted for advertising postcards, handed him a disk with my logo already formatted, and asked him how much it would cost.

Oh, "very cheap," he assured me. But how cheap? I wondered. Cheap cheap or expensive cheap?

A few days later, he called me and said he had a sample of the postcard he wanted to show me. "I can stop by your office in the afternoon," I said. "I found it on the map, so I should have no problem finding it."

"Oh no," he said, "Let's meet somewhere near the station."

Why doesn't he want me to see his office? I wondered.

I agreed to meet him at a coffee shop, all the while resisting the urge to call President Bush on my cell phone to tell him I think I knew where Saddam Hussein was hiding his weapons of mass destruction.

While sipping coffee, I looked over the sample he had prepared. He told me to suggest any changes. Now, it is my opinion that the use of color in Japan borders on abusive. "Um, about this psychedelic cow," I started. "My company logo is indeed a cow, but a black-and-white cow. We make natural products, and that feeling should be reflected in the basic black-and-white colors. The only color on the cow should be pink for the lips and the -- um," I stumbled, realizing I didn't know the word for "udder" in Japanese. Surely I couldn't call them cow breasts!

So I pointed to the udder, careful to avoid any potentially offensive words, and said, "this place where the milk comes out."

"Oh!" he said, "you mean the nipples!" So much for Japanese being a vague language.

"So, how much is it for postcards in black and white with just a smattering of pink for the lips and, um, nipples?" I asked.

He paused while adding up the figures in his head. Perhaps he was charging per nipple. Finally, he said, "Very cheap!"

A few days later, the fax churned out the "O-mitsumorisho" -- the price list. At last I would know the definition of cheap! Cheap is cheap at over 5,000 copies of something. Anything under that is expensive cheap. The quote was only for what I had requested. No other prices or options were given.

I immediately called the printer to ask a few questions about the paper quality. "Oh, let's meet at the station," he said. I was beginning to feel like we were dating.

Two more uchiawase later, we finally finished the postcard. That's five meetings and five coffees to make one postcard!

Today, I'll teach you how to make a small Japanese "karesansui" rock garden. You can see a "dry" garden of this type at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. You'll find that with even just a small space, you'll have plenty of room for mountains, islands and water inside your garden. This is because much of the rock garden is left to the imagination. Brilliant, eh? It's kind of like pretending you're Monet.

Here are the tools you'll need to create your masterpiece.

1) Rocks: You'll need lots of rocks, some of the small stone variety. And you'll have to pay for them, because there are probably not enough wild rocks in your neighborhood. You'll need small white ones like gravel, about 3 cm in diameter, which can be bought by the bagful. Lay these on the bottom of the garden. They represent water.

2) More rocks -- big ones: You'll need two or three big rocks. You should have one upright rock, and one or two horizontal rocks that lie on their sides and are flat on top. These rocks give your garden depth and width. Your rocks should look craggy, not smoothed over like the ones in a stream. These rocks represent mountains or islands. Take your pick.

The big rocks should be buried deep enough to give them a look of permanence, as if they have been there for a long time. Set one-third to one-half of the rock in the ground. It should not look as if you just read a newspaper column, decided to have a rock garden and placed the rocks there the same day.

It turns out that rocks prefer to hang out with their own kind, so use only rocks of the same kind and color. Space and balance are extremely important. If rocks are put too close to each other, relations could get a bit rocky. Space rocks apart from each other, yet in a unified group. Don't be surprised if all your rocks do is sit there looking at each other stone-faced. This is good. They should be exuding peace and tranquility.

3) A Rake: Lastly, rake the small stones into patterns around the big rocks. The patterns left by the rake represent waves in the water. Avoid tsunamis, though, or people will think you have rocks in your head. Do nothing that might upset the balance of the garden.

Some people pipe music into their gardens. No, not rock 'n' roll, not rockabilly, but slow strumming koto music. I'm not sure why people do this, though, since everyone should know that rocks are stone deaf.

Maintenance of your rock garden is easy and involves just giving it a passing glance as you leave the house for work. But the real beauty of the rock garden is that it is easy to take with you. I especially enjoy mine on the train. Just close your eyes and imagine your garden. Hold that picture. You will find peace. You are Monet.

You'll also find you can take solace in this image the next time you find yourself between a rock and a hard place. If you still haven't made your garden by then, however, I suggest you head to the nearest beer garden instead

The catalog encouraged me to. "You'll be able to express your deepest gratitude and best wishes to yourself," it says in English. Gosh, couldn't I just write myself a thank-you note?

I have to admit though, I was relieved to see that the catalog was named "Just Heart," thus clarifying that there would be no kidneys, intestines or other internal organs involved. A bit disappointing in some ways, perhaps (after all, we could all use some new kidneys, couldn't we?), but largely -- especially large intestine-wise -- it was a relief.

But as I looked through the "Just Heart" catalog, which offers English titles of every product, I found myself wanting to write that thank-you note to myself less and less. As greed slowly took over, I began yearning for some of the wonderful one-of-a kind things in this catalog.

For instance, the "slime stocker." It's about time someone came out with a product that allows you to store your slime, isn't it? Still a little vague on method, the picture shows a stack of slim plastic boxes for storage. A "slime stocker" would definitely come in handy to store those leftover UFOs (unidentified food objects) in the fridge, not to mention the mold from the bathroom. It doesn't tell you exactly how to stock the slippery stuff, but this is truly a new product I'd be the first one on the block to have.

The next section is the "Pick Up" section. Sorry, no trucks or women. This section includes things you can pick up with your hands, like kitchen knives, pizza cutters and cheese graters. How this differs from the "Kitchen One More Happy" section, I'm not sure, but here I found an ingenious product called a "ceramics knife," just in case I should suddenly decide to make some pottery while chopping veggies. There is also a "cassette cooking stove." You've been wondering what one does with old cassette tapes? Now you know.

I skipped over the section on "Brand Items," since I don't have any cows, but found the SOHO section very intriguing, offering "convenient and able stationery." Do you suppose it writes a letter and jumps into the envelope all by itself?

Or how about a "personal shredder?" I could shred myself anytime.

Being a small person, I was very interested in the "body care goods indispensable to care of the daily body compact type." For people who are not the compact type, however, and who are tall and solid types, I recommend moving on to the next page: "hearth and beauty care."

I was also interested in the "cocktail makeup set." Ladies, if you've never used cocktails as makeup, you're in for a real treat. Use the shaker, bottle opener, shot measurer and lemon squeezer as needed to make your favorite cocktail. Then, simply throw the mixed cocktail onto your face. It's refreshing!

Under the "Life Convenient Goods," section, there is the "space hanger rack" for conveniently hanging your space, and the "personal hanger," should you decide you just can't take any more of bad catalog English.

But before you do, let's take a look at the "Outdoor Section." What -- you don't want to? Oh come on, "get into the shine!"

Most of what I've learned about Japanese gardening comes from my neighbor Kazuko. Usually a mild-mannered woman, Kazuko becomes a heathen when in the garden. "Mo dame!" ("Already finished!") she exclaims while whacking off the heads of the tulips during their last hour of blooming. "Mo dame!" she says while yanking out daisies in their last moments of glory. Anything short of perfect gets the ax.

But don't let this scare you. Over the years, her seeds of advice have elevated my own garden to Japanese standards. By passing this information on directly to you, you'll have a successful garden in a mere 3 1/2 minutes. Ready to get started?

Day 1 (30 seconds): Fill planters with store-bought soil. The only sensible type of flower garden in Japan is a container garden. The idea is to elevate the dirt. This is because in Japan, the ground is a dangerous place for flowers. Think of the ground as a large graveyard where planting something is as good as burying it, since it will soon die anyway. This is because Japanese soil is a combination of sand and Godzilla DNA, so your flowers have a very small chance of survival. Thus, container gardens.

Day 2 (30 sec.): Choose from predetermined flower combinations. Once you've chosen your pots, you'll need to consider which flowers should share the same pot. What? You were going to give an entire pot to one type of flower? Don't be so simplistic. Choose predetermined flower combinations that retain the "sempai-kohai" relationship inside the pot in order to generate flowerpot harmony. For example, tall yellow marigolds, short purple petunias and something that bows, such as ivy, go well in the same pot. Do not try your own combinations. Planting geraniums and petunias in the same pot, for example, is an unacceptable combination that will cause undue stress on the frowning muscles of your neighbors.

Day 3 (30 sec.): Put up lattice. You can never have too much lattice. A good half your garden should be lattice, which is necessary for hanging cute thingies, such as hanging pots and English signs. Lattice can be put anywhere. It can even share your veranda with the laundry.

Day 4 (30 sec.): Put up more lattice.

Day 5 (30 sec.): Add an English phrase. In Japan, the English phrase is a necessary component of any flower garden. You can't have a proper flower garden without some English conversation in the form of a sign or plaque. The most popular sign is the one that says, "Welcome to my garden." But there are several other meaningless ones to choose from. Mine says, "Every birdie loves his own nest best." These signs are hung on the lattice, of course.

Day 6 (30 sec.): Add more nonplant decorations such as wooden cartoon characters on sticks next to the flowers. Small ceramic figures, such as farm animals or gnomes, can be set on the soil in the container next to the plants. You can never really have enough of these.

Day 7 (30 sec.): Yank like a heathen! Yank out any soon-to-expire blooms or plants while exclaiming "Mo dame!" Make sure there are no fallen petals on the soil. Replace flowers promptly with something in bloom.

Now, go water your plants. Welcome to your garden.

These were the gifts that the son and his family had brought for friends and relatives who would be attending the "Okanki" prayers that would take place in the house where I live -- their ancestral home (called "Okankin" in other parts of Japan). The family had asked to be able to return for the weekend for this ceremony and to take the urn to the local cemetery for burial. My landlord was an 85 year-old lady who had grown up here on this island. Of course I obliged, although I avoided telling them about the cat.

You see, I have a white cat who, now that it is spring time, is molting.
I tried brushing her, but she is very skilled at "iaido" and drawing a sword, so I back off. Besides, she prefers to brush herself -- by rubbing up against the pant-legs of anyone who walks into the house. The Japanese are so polite though, they always say the same thing, "Oh, don't worry. I have cellophane tape at home." But I was still worried because all the guests coming for Okanki would be wearing black.

I vacuum every day, sometimes twice, but it still doesn't prevent blizzards of white hair passing through the house regularly. They're more like cumulous clouds, really. I've even considered leaving the vacuum running 24 hours a day.

The family arrived at my house with the urn in a Tokyo Disney bag. They brought back not just the bones, but the Adam's apple too. These were set in the family shrine inside the house. The island's Buddhist priest arrived and knelt on a cushion in front of the altar and chanted, while the family sat behind him.

I put the cat outside, as I didn't want to take the chance of the priest choking on a cat hair while chanting. Then I went into the kitchen to prepare green tea. I did look in on the chanting session once, and the son's wife was sending e-mail from her cell phone.

This is why Japanese funeral ceremonies remind me of kabuki performances. People come and go, mentally and physically, many of them with a mere passing interest.

Later, another chanting session was held for 15 neighbors and friends. Everyone gathered in front of the shrine for this. The lady leading the chants was practically deaf, so the chants wandered up and down with no real rhythm and everyone in the room started to giggle. People giggled so hard, tears came from their eyes. Or perhaps they were just allergic to cats.

After the chants and giggles, someone opened the window for some fresh air. Suddenly, like lightning, the cat jumped through the window and ran through the house so fast, she left nothing but a cloud of white hairs swirling in the air behind her. The hairs quickly hitch-hiked onto a static wave and transported themselves to the nearest black suit.

The bones and the Adam's apple stayed overnight and were carried to the temple the next day via the Disney bag. Despite the fact that everyone was rolled down repeatedly with a lint brush before they left my house, I noticed at the temple that most people were still wearing my cat anyway. Well, that's OK. They must have cellophane tape at home.