One of the best things about moving from Japan to Hawaii is that we haven’t had to leave Japan totally behind. In Hawaii, about one in every seven people is Japanese, and much of that is concentrated on Oahu, so the percentage is even higher. Because we loved Japan so much, moving from there to, say, rural North Carolina would have been a real culture shock. But here it was mitigated.
For instance, three blocks away is the Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji temple; a functioning Buddhist temple that also often does community events. Even though we know this, we never seem to know when those events actually are. But last weekend, on a long day where we had also gotten sunburned (which makes everyone especially grumpy) Joe walked the dog to calm down an exhausted Eliot, and he noticed people streaming down to the temple, music starting, and banners and signs.
So we all came down, half an hour after the boys should have been sleeping, to the local Buddhist temple, alongside much of the community.
Lincoln and I fought through the crowds towards the smells of curry, yakatori and andagi, and Eliot ate everything that even came near his mouth.
The parking lot was nearly filled up with people so we came out by the fence to eat, which almost made Lincoln cry because “I want to be by the dancing people, Dad.”
An older woman started the party on the taiko (drum), and the Japanese dancers filled the cement parking lot, encouraging the onlookers to learn traditional dances that have been danced in Japan for hundreds of years. Many hung back, worried they would do it wrong, but Lincoln had no such fears. “Hold my donut so I can dance, Mom,” he said, before running towards the dancers in his mismatched clothes and rain boots.
It’s not the most beautiful building or setting; it is surrounded by houses and telephone wires, and the concrete parking lot is uneven and multi-colored. It seems far different from the Buddhist temples where we took Lincoln when he was a year old, when we came as tourists to the depths of Kyoto, to temples with their curved roofs, dark wood trim and bamboo floors, its quiet people and its incense filling up the inside. Those places we had to leave quickly, because they were not events for the community but for the believers who gathered for ceremonies that required calm and quiet; and we are not believers and calm and quiet are things that one year old Lincoln (and three year old Lincoln) can’t do well.
Here, this day, was different. People laughing, eating, clapping and catching up with old friends.
But it still reminded us of places on the mainland that we had seen; people in multi-colored kimonos in the shadows of tall, green mountains, their pink and purple flashing contrasting the smoky grey and green of a land that is covered in green moss and fragrant trees. (Some things on Pacific islands are all the same.)
It brought us from ancient Japan where these dances have survived, done by peasants without a stitch of color on them, to modern day Japan with its colors everywhere, to here in Hawaii, far away from the mainland, on a concrete parking lot surrounded by Hawaiian houses.
But maybe not too far from Japan after all.
Comments