November 16, 2008

• 11/15/2008

  Today was the completion of Grandma's project!!  We loaded the two urns into my wheeled suitcase and brought them down to the temple for our 10:00 appointment.  We handed the "proof of recremation" document over to the temple lady who congratulated us on finally getting everything done.  A priest came into the repository, unlocked the family shelf where the urns were place, relocked it and did about ten minutes worth of chanting.  No one really understands what the chanting means unless they have studied it, as it is not standard Japanese.  I didn't really feel anything.  Maybe I was numbed by the whole thing. 

  It didn't have anything to do with one religion or another.  Myself, I don't care where the urns are, and I know that no amount of sutra chanting or incense burning is going to make any difference.  It was just a legal matter, and just something that Grandma wanted done.  I would have preferred that she had been able to take care of her own project, but there must be some reason that I was assigned to finish it, and I sensed that I had God's help in completing the task for His purposes, whatever they may be.  I was glad for her that she was happy it was finally finished.  After telling Grandma that the urns were safely in the temple we went back to the house. 

  There were a few of those lovely but nasty "kiobi edashaku" moths flying around, so we thought we had better put out some more poison around the roots of their inumaki favorite trees in Grandma's garden.  The poison supposedly sinks into the ground and is ingested by the tree to make it impalatable to the larvae.  As I sprinkled the poisonous powder here and there I noticed a caterpillar or two in the trees and gave ONE of the tree branches a little shake.  About thirty caterpillars of all sizes from teensy to corpulent all suddenly dropped down on little bungee cords to form a caterpillar curtain!  I shook the whole trunk and suddenly there were jillions of caterpillars hanging down like tinsel on a Christmas tree.  I told hub to get me a jar and I collected as many as I could while he went after the buggy curtain with a can of insecticide.  Now we had a suffering buggy curtain.  I smashed as many of the fallen as I could.  A neighbor, Mr. T got gleefully involved and brought his own bag of poison to fling in our garden.  He really likes killing those buggys.

  After that we did a final cleanup of the house and headed back to Fukuoka.

  • 22:23
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