7 5 3

Back at work. I don’t know why I feel like I can get this done more here than at home. Could be because I have so much time on the computer here. I have also planned lots of my lessons already and so end up wasting time surfing net. I could probably study Japanese…
Last November we took the boy to the shrine to celebrate his becoming 5 years old. Shichi-go-san (7,5,3) is often celebrated here, I’ve heard that it started because children didn’t survive long in the old days, so people started to go to the shrine to give thanks to the gods that their children were still alive. Wikipedia, however didn’t mention that. Anyway, boys go at 5 years old and get dressed up in a hakama or suit. We rented a hakama for him, it was beautiful.



The shop that we rented it from was great. The woman said to my mother-in-law that we don’t need to pay for someone to put it on him (the sashes should be tied elaborately, especially if you are going to get pictures done) and that she would teach us. So she did. My mother-in-law tried it a couple of times and then the saleswoman told us we could take it home to practice with. We had wanted to use it the next week. She also told us that she was going to give us a special deal-we said that our price range was around 15,000 yen or about $150 but the one she showed us first was about double that. Gulp. She said if we liked it we could rent it for our price range. Nice. She was really good at sales, I think. Anyway, we rented it and ended up borrowing it for a week longer since we couldn’t get to the shrine on that weekend. It was great, didn’t cost anymore money or anything. My poor mother-in-law ended up practicing and practicing tying the sash (she used a garbage can) and in the end Hiroki kept looking down at it while she was tying it and saying “That’s wrong, you’re doing it wrong!” Rat.