I went to view plum blossom in a light snowstorm today. While staring at the map near the park entrance, an older Japanese woman approached me.
“Do you speak Japanese?” she asked. “And which country are you from?”
Both are standard opening questions in Japan. Only a little, I told her. And I’m from Britain.
“Well, would you give me the pleasure of praying over there with me?” she continued in Japanese.
I have never been able to refuse middle-aged Japanese ladies. No one has.
We walked over to some filthy benches near a bank of vending machines. She laid down a Burberry handkerchief for me to sit on. “Burberry is from Britain!” she beamed. “Now, let’s pray. Close your eyes and keep repeating ‘Hallelujah’.”
I was born and raised in London. Whenever someone asks you to close your eyes and start praying, you expect their accomplice to appear seconds later armed with a knife.
“Close your eyes,” she insisted.
I pretended to comply and kept one eye open to watch for danger while I also listened for the sound of footsteps behind me. All I could hear were two teenagers in the background practicing baseball and traffic from the highway.
“Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah… Come on. It’s all in the tongue.”
I complied, thinking it was unfortunate that a cult had been founded in Japan that relied on the repetition of a word with multiple ‘L’ sounds.
“Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah…” I wondered when (and how) this would end.
“Repeat! Hallelujah Hallelululululululululululululu…” She entered a trance.
A white van pulled up next to an old park building across from us. A maintenance guy got out and continued about his day. Not an accomplice.
The woman started a prayer. I stopped, but she encouraged me to continue while she prayed over the chant. “Amen,” she said eventually.
“Amen.” I opened both eyes.
She told me the church she belongs to believes in full water baptism to unite the body and the soul. When pressed, she said that the church operated outside of the typical ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ denominations and if I went to the Tokyo branch, they would explain everything to me. I thanked her, took the leaflet she offered me and went to view the plum blossoms.
I consulted Wikipedia afterwards and discovered she belongs to a fairly well-known “new religious movement” (a neutral alternative to ‘cult’) founded by Murai Jun in 1941.
The plum blossoms were beautiful and gleaming with drops of melted snow. Enjoy the photographs!
Click on the photographs to see a bigger version
First of all, i loved the photos! Then, even though you said you worked semi-professionally as a writer, i would definetly be a fan if you started “professionally” working as one. The way you wrote the incident with the old lady was … i don’t know how to say it, i can’t find a proper word (probably my English is worse than i thought), but it seemed like the begining of an interesting fictional story that also has some realistic strings in it pulling it back on Earth. Or something like that. :D
Anywayz, you’d be a great professional writer.
Wow, I really don’t know what to say to a comment like that! I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve it. But thank you very much for your kind words anyway. I’m certainly trying to get my work published and I think blogging is pretty useful for finding a ‘voice’. We’ll see.
You do deserve it. When you do that, when you’ll get your work published, please make sure there will be some way of shipping it overseas. Definetly “must read” in my book.
Haha, I can’t believe you met such an “eccentric” person (let’s be polite). It looks like you got lost in one of Murakami’s novels. ^^
I always seem to meet eccentric people when I least expect it. It’s always at tea ceremonies and in parks… never at the goth and/or fetish nights I attend. :P