Hi, everyone!
The day before Karin-chan’s shichi-go-san ceremony, Grandma and Grandpa and Joe-san and Nancy-san took Moose-san and me for a walk around Shinjuku. We went to the Municipal Government Building, where there’s an observatory in each of the towers of Building One. It’s not as high up as Skytree, but it’s free to visit! The security guard checking bags liked me and gave me a head rub! Once we got up to the observatory, Moose-san and I were glad to see a sign that told us what buildings we were looking at. We could see a lot of them from our hotel, too! When we came down from the observatory, we visited one of the statues in the plaza. Moose-san liked all the apples!
There is a toy store in the middle of the observatory. We were excited to see Star Wars chopsticks for sale! When we told Bill-kun and Karin-chan about them, they showed us that they already had a set!
Karin’s shichi-go-san ceremony was on Sunday. I went to Karin-chan and Bill-kun’s last shichi-go-san ceremony five years ago, so I could tell Moose-san what to expect! Shichi-go-san means seven-five-three. Seven and three year old girls and five year old boys dress up in traditional Japanese outfits and visit a Shinto shrine with their families. The priests offer prayers of blessing and everybody takes lots of pictures!
While we were at the shrine, other families were also doing shichi-go-san or bringing new babies to be blessed. There was even a wedding going on! The shrine has a very pretty stairway with lots of red gates, so Karin-chan posed for photos there, too! Then we did family photos, and Moose-san and I got to be in them!
After all the photos were taken, we signed in for the actual blessing ceremony. We had to wait until it was our turn to enter the shrine room for the priests’ blessings. When the prayers were over, Karin-chan got presents and a pink balloon! Grandma bought me a monkey charm as a souvenir. I think I’ll put it on the Christmas tree when we put it up!
We were going to have dinner at Ukai Tofuya restaurant, which is right at the base of Tokyo Tower. We were early for our reservation, so we went to Tokyo Tower to watch nightfall first. Karin-chan went to the gift shop and got a teeny-tiny book to write notes in. Then we went up to the observatory floors. This is the third high place in Tokyo we’ve visited to see the city below, but the only one we’ve been in after dark! The view was very pretty!
I told Moose-san that Ukai Tofuya was a very pretty restaurant with a fancy menu! Their specialty is tofu (soybean curd) cooked many ways, so they have big barrels of soybeans at the entrance. Karin-chan and Bill-kun stopped to play with them before we went to our private dining room. The hostess made a special place for Moose-san and me to sit for dinner.
After dinner, Moose-san and I got a chance to play in the soybeans. Then we had to give Karin-chan a goodbye hug because we were going home the next day. It was raining, so Uncle David gave us a ride to the nearest train station and we took a subway line back to our hotel.
When we got up on Monday, we could see Mount Fuji again from our hotel room window! We walked over to Shinjuku station and took the Narita Express train to the airport. Riding that train was another first for Moose-san! When we got to the airport, we had time to eat lunch before check-in opened for our flight. Moose-san and I even had time to play in the children’s area!
When we got to check-in, we got a surprise! Our flight was going to be so late departing from Japan that we probably wouldn’t be able to catch the connecting flight from Chicago back to Rochester. The airline had already booked us for a flight the next morning and paid for us to stay in a hotel near the airport overnight! We had a nice breakfast before we took the hotel shuttle bus back to the airport, and this time we really got on the plane! It was a very long day, but we finally got Joe-san and Nancy-san and Moose-san back to their house. Moose-san gave me a goodbye hug!
Some rituals, like shichi-go-san, are public and some are private. On Friday, Grandma and Grandpa turned on the lights on our apple trees for the first time this season, marking twenty years since Uncle Bill died. One of the strings of lights wasn’t working, but Grandma was singing a concert and said she’d fix them on Saturday when she had time.
On Saturday morning, Grandma replaced the light string that wasn’t working. Then she and Grandpa and I went over to church to decorate the Christmas tree in the sanctuary. That’s another way we remember Uncle Bill. When all the other decorations were on, Grandma put bird ornaments at the very top of the tree to remember Uncle Bill and Timothy, another young man who died the same year. Then I helped get out the other bird ornaments, so that church families who had experienced a death this year could put a bird on the tree to remember their loved ones. The tree is very pretty when all the birds are in place!
When it got dark, I was eager to see the apple trees with all their lights working. They were very pretty at twilight, and even prettier after dark!
Now we start a time of lots of traditions I love! Next week we’ll get the Christmas tree, then I’ll help Grandma and Grandpa decorate the tree and the house for Christmas. I’m looking forward to all the entertaining we do this time of year!
Love,
Lion-san