Chapter 64: CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

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CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The the others were sitting at the living room dining table, when I went into the living room from the tatami room where they'd let me sleep. Ruriko waved me to the one empty chair. "We usually eat our osechi around the kotatsu. But this year there are five of us. And we didn't have to worry about Yumi-chan before, either. I hope it's alright."

Thinking of sitting on my zabuton cushion with my legs under my own kotatsu in my apartment with its electric heater under the futon, "I can see how a kotatsu would be more Oshogatsu-like. But your dining table is fine with me."

As I was sitting down, I looked the beautiful lacquered square box placed in the middle of the table and the matching dishes and chopstick settings placed in front of each person.

Mom took the top off the lacquered box, lifted the four square lacquered trays below it that made up the body and arranged them just so in the middle of the table. Each tray was filled with different kinds of osechi, each in small comparments. Somewhat like the store-bought osechi I had eaten last year. But my God, how much more beautiful they looked. Still, the different dishes looked like the ones I'd eaten last year. Only there were so many more different kinds of them. But I also remembered how yecch! most of them tasted.

The others put their hands together like in prayer and said "Itadakimasu," meaning " I will receive," took their hashi chopsticks and started picking up one piece of the ingredients at a time.

Following their example, I picked up one of the shrimp.

Mom said, "That's ebi and means 'long life'. See how its back is bent and has whiskers."

I took a bite. "Wow! Mom, this tastes delicious!"

Ruriko smiled at me, "I told you, Dave, Mom really knows how to cook osechi. And she's teaching me how to make my own."

I saw the red and white slices of kamaboko fish paste and took a white slice.

"That means sunrise." Mom

"It does? And here I thought it meant the Red and White Singing Contest." To which the others burst out laughing.

Still chuckling Dad explained, "I'm afraid they unfortunately didn't have the pleasure of watching the Red and White Singing Contest on TV back in the Heian Period when the tradition of osechi began."

"The Heian Period? But that was more than as thousand years ago!"

After the others had stopped their chuckling, I picked up a slice of fish that I remembered was one of the few things that tasted okay last year.

"That's tai sea bream for "omedeTAI congratulations" to welcome the New Year," Mom explained.

And so it went. Me picking up a piece of the osechi, Mom explaining it the meaning of it, and the others just gobbling down whatever they wanted, while carrying on a conversation with each other. And Yumi occasionally bawling her head making Ruriko dash into her bedroom to feed her.

But MAN! What a difference from last year! I'm with company this year instead of being all alone. And every bite of this osechi was fantastic and each seemed to have a different sweet flavoring. My God! I actually wanted to eat this osechi.

Ruriko must have seen how I was really getting into the my osechi. "Mom makes a different flavoring using sake and shoyu soy sauce and other ingredients for each different dish. That's what I'm learning from her."

When I was finished, I was feeling wonderfully stuffed silly . . . Hey! On osechi yet!

At any rate it was time to get ready to go to the shrine. I went back to the tatami mat room they had given me -- man, the number of rooms this house has! -- and opened my suitcase and grabbed a slightly better shirt I could wear, praying that shrine is as informal as Ruriko says it is.

When I went back into the living room, Toshi and Dad were there wearing rather formal black suits. "We'll have to wait a while for the women folk," Dad explained. "They've got to put on their kimono. And help each other putting on their obi sash."

When they finally came out, Mom was wearing the rather staid black kimono of a married women. But Ruriko was all dolled up in a brilliant, many colored kimono.

"Ruriko, you're married. I thought married women were supposed to wear an inconspicuous kimono so they won't attract other men."

Smiling beautifully, "This is the only kimono I've ever owned. My mother had it made for me when I turned twenty years old for my Coming of Age Day ceremony."

"And," Toshi added smiling big, too, "It's also the kimono she was wearing when I first met her."

"What? Did you two go to the same shrine for your hatsumde first prayer of the New Year?"

Both he and Ruriko laughed. "No, it was at a wedding reception," Toshi explained. "I was a good friend of the groom."

Ruriko giggled, "And I was a good friend of the bride, fortunately,".

All of us piled into the sedan except Mom and Yumi.

"Why isn't Mom coming?"

"She has to stay home and feed Yumi-chan whenever Yumi-chan wakes up. Even though all her children are grown up, she still enjoys feeding a baby in her arms. She'll go to the shrine when we come back."

"But she feeds Yumi-chan with a baby bottle. I thought you wanted her to be breastfed.

Ruriko blushed slightly. "She's feeding her with my breast milk that I squirted into the bottle this morning."

The shrine was a few kilometers farther down Route 9. The road leading off Route 9 to it was very definitely snowplowed. And we easily passed another car coming from the opposite direction just before we reached it. As we walked under the red Torii gateway, I saw the shrine was even smaller than the one I had gone to last year. But the people walking around in it were having quite a good time apparently, as they climbed the stairs to make their first prayer of the new year.

Dad went up ther stairs to the shrine first, dropped a ten yen coin in the collection box, clapped his hand twice, bowed his head, made his wish and came back down to let Toshii go next, then Ruriko.

Then it was my turn.

I gulped. Hoping like hell I wouldn't make a total ass of myself, I climbed the stairs and dropped the nice shiny, newly minted five hundred yen coin I was so proud to have gotten into collection box. I clapped my hands together twice, bowed my head and silently said my prayer:

"Oh God. Please make all of my future Oshogatsu as wonderful as this one. Please? Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?"

Submitted: February 09, 2025

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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B Douglas Slack

Loved this chapter, Ken. I remember well going to friend's houses who lived off-base and sitting down to dinner under a heated kosatsu in Winter. I was aware of the purposes of several meal portions, but wasn't sure how extensive it was. I'm astounded there are so many.

My only trip to a temple ended well. I'm afraid I "overtipped" with a large bill instead of coins, though.

Bill

Sun, February 23rd, 2025 11:41pm