Out with the old

Our new interpreters name is Haruo or H for short, we originally had Chris a Polish guy doing the interpreting H took over from Chris late last year after I had gone.

H is a real nice guy and is very helpful, over the time i been here I've become quite good friends with him and been out with him a couple of times, the other day i took him to the local big shrine in Utsunomiya (Futaarayama shrine) to burn his old shrine decorations.

The vast majority of people in Japan are of the Shinto religion, Shinto actually means way of the gods and a lot of these have a little shrine in there houses. These shrines are decorate each year then at the end of that year new decorations are bought and placed around the shrine and the old ones are burned at the local shrine which is what we or he did, it's a religious thing supposed to be burning all the old spirits and bad luck.

Think it was very ceremonial when they first started doing it way back when, don't get me wrong it's still quite a big thing but probably not as formal as it used to be, interesting though.

That me with a couple of the decorations he had some more but just little things.

So we are at the shrine first thing is you say a little prayer as you enter, I don't but all the Japanese do. After that seems like most people tied a little prayer paper on a tree or on a rack for good luck for the new year then it's off to burn the old decorations in a great big fire. There are thousands of people there so it's a bit unceremonious to say the least the guys near the fire take the old decorations off you that are usually in a carrier bag or something like that then just chuck them on the fire, just thank you very much then chuck. After the decorations are in the fire everyone walks round it and is wafting the smoke onto them for good luck for the next year and that's pretty much it. I think we did the condensed version as i was there, I asked H what he normally did and he said we pretty much did everything.

You can see from the photos that lots of people tie prayers and good luck emblems for the following year on to trees and stuff, in fact some of the trees looked like it had been snowing after they had finished

The fire was behind a big mesh fence so no one could fall in or get hurt, sort of spoiled it a little bit and took off some of the shine, I'd imagined it a sort of a bonfire on the 5th November in the UK maybe even with some fireworks, and baked spuds, they did sell warm Sake and food though, seems there's always warm Sake and beer at any kind of religious event here.

Damm just realised that i don't have photo of H will have to try and add one later.