Today I did a bit of hunting to find out what it all meant and discovered that on this day, people perform a weaning ceremony for their baby called Okuizome where they offer the baby a sumptuous (though strictly ceremonial) meal of foods like snapper, rice, pickled plum, clear soup and a stone (weird, I know, but it is Japan after all). The baby doesn't actually eat any of it - he just gets these items touched to his lips while he probably thinks, "What is this and where the hell is my milk?!"
Anyway, the ritual meal and feeding is meant to wish the baby a life with abundance and without hunger.
The reason I was compelled to do research was because when I had asked my mom about it, she seemed sketchy on the details. Very sketchy. Her inkling was that maybe it was to celebrate that the baby didn't die in 100 days so it will probably survive. Weird, macabre, and totally Yoko.
The foods in the meal all have significance (like the snapper, tai, being associated with celebration or medetai, etc.) and the stone is supposed to represent strong teeth for the child. As my mom didn't know about this Okuizome stuff, it follows that I did not have a stone ceremoniously touched to my mouth on the day pictured above, which could very well be the reason for my life-long dental issues and nothing to do with the fact that as a child I ate candy like it was its own essential food group.
Though I know it's no substitute for proactive parenting (don't worry: I do plan to teach this kid about self-control and dental hygiene), don't think for a moment that I'll skip out on touching a stone to his mouth tonight. If there was ever a perk to being half-Japanese, it's doing all these weird things with impunity.
