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I grew up looking at this picture of me taken on
my hundredth day, so I knew there was some significance to it and calculated when our baby's hundredth day would be.
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.
Abbot and Costello have nothing on us:
Y: You know, I found that in your room today.
N: (abject terror) WHAT?!
Y: My metronome.
N: Oh! I thought you were going to say mukade. Don't scare me like that!
Y: (enters my room) Ha ha. I forgot about mukade.
N: Well, I haven't.
She looks at the kimono I have hanging up air-pressing wrinkles out before I have to wear it on Wednesday.
Y: This is nice!
N: Yeah, I'm going to wear it Wednesday to the sobetsukai.
Y: Where's mine?
I'd sent three out for cleaning; they'd belonged to my grandmother and hadn't seen the light of day since whenever, a long time ago. Two I will bring with me back to the US. One is a formal kimono of the style of a married woman, with the Matsuda crest on it. My mom told me I should have it cleaned for her.
N: Over there in the wrapping.
We open the package and look at it.
Y: That's not mine. I've never seen it before.
N: Yeah, I know. It was baba's.
Y: You're not going to take it with you?
N: No, I can't wear it because you can only wear it if you're married.
Y: But, I'm not married.
N: Argh! You know what I mean! Anyway, Sumie-san said that you can wear it to a formal event, like if I ever get married or whatever, you can wear it to my wedding.
Y: Will you get married then, so I can wear this kimono?
N: Ha ha ha!
Y: Really. It doesn't matter to who.
Monday was girls' day in Japan and traditionally you put out hina dolls until the day of the celebration. I was talking to one of my students the day after girls' day and she told me that there is a superstition/tradition in Japan that if you don't put the dolls away by night-fall of the actual day, the girls in your house will never be brides. Of course, here it is now days after girls' day and our dolls are still out.
"Well," said my mom, "it doesn't matter. I don't really plan on getting married again, so..."
"And what about me?" I asked.
Her response was to laugh in my face. Well, I guess it doesn't really count if I'm laughing, too.
This morning I was telling my mom about the folding method for the little rag used in the tea ceremony for wiping the inside of the tea bowl. It is complex but extremely important because one wrong turn and you'll end up somewhere weird at the end (with the fold in the wrong direction and you can't do the next part of the process). Anyway, so I was showing her with a kleenex as an example, and placed the little folded tissue so she could see it.
"Well, that's all fine and dandy*, but..."
"But, what?!"
"If you can make a good bowl of tea, what does it matter if you can fold the little cloth right?"
I then gave a lecture in slightly incredulous tones about the beauty of ritual and how tradition connects you to history - how when I fold the cloth like that, engage in this ritual, I'm connected to all the people who have ever performed the tea ceremony all the way back to Rikyu himself! The fact is, she understands my feeling and is laughing just as I am laughing through this entire exchange because I also know she knows. I don't think you can be a classical musician and not have some clue about connecting to the past.
Anyway, this episode ended like this: Laughing so hard, my mom began to cough a little, then grabbed the delicately folded tissue I'd made as an example and hocked a loogie into it.
My first footnote:
*'fine and dandy' is only an approximation of what she said in Japanese. She doesn't actually talk like that, though recently she really did say "Gee Whiz"
