Obon

Obon is often called the Japanese equivalent of Thanksgiving. It is a time when many adults travel back to their parent;s houses for several days. During this time, the spirits of the one's ancestors are thought to return.

We drove down the road that winds out of the green hills and down to the fishing village that lies huddled against the ocean, now illuminated with flecks of gold by the sun, already low in the sky. The roads were narrow, though the cliffs that accompanied the car as it bumped along the ravines of the hills had been replaced by fences bordering on the lush green of rice paddies. The host's daughter who was sitting in the passenger seat leans far forward so that her small arms crossed on the dash. She is very shy and seemed to want to be as far from the strange looking foreigners in the back seat as possible.

The car slowly navigated the labyrinthine streets of the fishing village. Several older residents stood outside their front door and talked in the evening air. They looked up as we drove by; first the instant recognition as they meet eyes with our host driving the car, and then their surprise as they see the gaijin filling the back seat. Across the street two children are played, chasing each other around in the dirt yard. They stop to looked up as we drove by.

Our host's house is large. It is all a beautiful, light wood that we are soon to learn was chopped down by the grandfather many years before on the slopes of the mountains that looms above us. Almost every room with the exception of the bathrooms and kitchen have tatami mat floors. They are well-lived in. The kitchen wall is covered in pictures of the family's four children (One 10 year old boy, one eight year old boy, one six year old boy, and one four year old girl [the one that was afraid of us in the car]). They have arranged them so that there is a picture for each year, so that the eldest boy's string contains ten pictures and the youngest sister's contains four. Some of these pictures look to have been taken during holidays. Others are studio pictures. A few even appear to have been taken at some theme park with men dressed up as an analogue of the power rangers posing with the boy as he punches at the air.

The family is sitting in the television room, the eldest boy playing some baseball game on a console I have never seen before. Toys are scattered on the floor. Our host takes us into a back room and we see before us a kind of shrine. In the center is a framed picture of a recently deceased woman. It is haloed on its stand by a plethora of sundry objects: there are several candles, a small watermelon, an unopened beer, some packaged food whose label I cannot read. In a nearby corner are what looked to be wrapped gifts, I never learned what these were.

We then went through the ritual one by one that we would later do several times that night. We kneeled down on a cushion before the picture and taking two incense sticks in our hand, lit them. We then waved out the flame so that no light came from them any longer but they still smoked, and we placed them in a pot of sand among many other old incense sticks. Then we bowed twice, clapped twice, and then bowed a final time.

We later went through this same ritual at the neighbor's house. They all seemed very pleased that we had come, and the oldest man in the family eagerly showed us to his "shrine" (this probably is not the proper terminology, but at the minute I can think of nothing better). It was much larger since the person pictured had just recently passed away. He was all smiles as we did what we had done before in our host's house. Afterwards they gave us something to drink and had us take some fresh sashimi and tempuraed shrimp from their bountiful table. He leaned over and told us in Japanese that his brother would be very happy that foreigners had come to see him.

As good as the food was, it was not prepared for us, and after a few bites we walked back to our host's house. Their her father-in-law was setting up the barbecue. He had a bucket of turban shells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turban_shell) and had already start to put them over the fire. His son brought out half of a large fish and placed that on the barbecue next to the shells. Suddenly our host came out with her mother-in-law and skewers of pork and shrimp, and balls of rice with pieces of fish in it were all on the fire. The children sat in tiny chairs at the edge and drank Coke. The daughter knocked her small cup over twice and the boys disappeared at intervals to play along the periphery of the circle of adults. The grandfather seemed especially pleased to have us there and quizzed us on what we thought of where we were from, what we thought of Tsushima, which of us was strongest. Had collected much of the seafood that we were eating (at least the fish and the turban shells). He laughed often and was constantly urging us to eat more. The fish may have been the best of the dishes. We ate it straight off the barbecue, each person taking a piece with their chop sticks. At intervals family members would slip off to go to one of the shrines to pray. The grandfather stayed with us though, laughing and asking questions.

Finally after the buildings around us had all but disappeared into the darkness, we were told that the big event of the night was about to commence. We walked down the street and noticed that other people also were emerging from their homes and filing in the general direction of the ocean. Fireworks were going off, their blaze shooting over the roofs of the houses. Eventually we meandered into a larger lane and saw five small boats, each probably six feet long being carried by sets of the town's men. Each boat had red, spherical lanterns hanging on it, lit from within. They bobbed and swayed as the boats were carried down the street and toward the ocean. I later learned that these boats symbolically contained the residents of the village who had died that year. For this reason they contained many articles that represented the deceased A young man went before all the boats throwing fire crackers and bottle rockets without care so that they went whizzing in all directions, making all before know of the coming of the procession of boats.

The man who had been so keen for us to visit the shrine of his older brother asked me a question which I did not understand. A few seconds later I found myself helping to carry one of the boats. I was surprised at how light it was as though I had actually expected to feel the weight of the older brother, sitting placidly, awaiting his trip out to sea.

We finally reached the port where much of the village was waiting for us. A this point the older man took the handle of the boat back for the final leg.

Amid a flurry of fireworks the five boats were towed out of the harbor by skiffs. They dwindled to points of light barely distinguishable from the oceanic darkness around. Somewhere out, framed by the infinite mystery of the dark ocean, between the endless expanse of stars and the cold dark ocean, the boat would be released to make their final departure from Earth. As we lost sight of the boats I could not help but glance over at the old man who had had us carry the boats. I wondered what he felt watching his older brother sail off into the night one final time.

Soon after, we turned and walked back into the lights of the town.