okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a pan-fried Japanese dish cooked with various ingredients. Okonomi means "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki means "grilled" or "cooked"; thus, the name of this dish means "cook what you like, the way you like".

sakura

In Japan, sakura or cherry blossom is an enduring symbol of the beauty and transience of life. During spring, the flowers bloom and usually fall within a week, before the leaves come out. It’s been sublime seeing Sapporo accentuated with various shades of white and pink.

Beautiful, yet all-too-brief... like life itself.

"All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever."
1 Peter 1:24-25

omikuji

Omikuji are random fortunes written on strips of paper at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan.


Fortunes can be any of the following:

• Great blessing (dai-kichi, 大吉)
• Middle blessing (chū-kichi, 中吉)
• Small blessing (shō-kichi, 小吉)
• Blessing (kichi, 吉)
• Half-blessing (han-kichi, 半吉)
• Near-blessing (sue-kichi, 末吉),
• Near-small-blessing (sue-shō-kichi, 末小吉)
• Curse (kyō, 凶)
• Small curse (shō-kyō, 小凶)
• Half-curse (han-kyō, 半凶)
• Near-curse (sue-kyō, 末凶)
• Great curse (dai-kyō, 大凶)

If the prediction turns out to be good, it is customary to keep the slip of paper as a talisman. When the prediction is bad, it is a custom to fold up the strip of paper and attach it to a pine tree in the temple grounds. Supposedly, the tree then bears the curse until the wind blows it away.

children's day

Kodomo no hi (meaning "Children's Day") is a Japanese national holiday which takes place annually on May 5, the fifth day of the fifth month, during the Golden Week period. It is a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness.

golden week

It's currently Golden Week in Japan; a collection of national holidays during the first week of May. Some of these holidays and festivals are derived from animism or Shinto Buddhism, but much of the cultural significance is now lost amongst the Japanese. Golden Week is now commonly viewed as a few days crammed together to give the nation’s soldiering salary men somewhat of a rest.

In reality, the week-long holiday is actually only 3 weekdays - Tuesday and Wednesday are in fact regular working days.

Although Japanese people might not worship nature or the emperor these days, it's evident that they've replaced it with another form of worship - materialism. The sad reality is that Japanese (and this probably applies to much of the rest of the world) spend their lives worshiping at the temple of 'stuff' - some people spend their entire lives at the shopping mall or they spend their time in preparation for being at the shopping mall, heading home in preparation to earn more money so that they can go back for the latest clothes, furniture, sporting equipment, housing appliances, home entertainment, tech gadgets ...


cf. Romans 1:22-32