Wednesday, June 24, 2009

It's cold!

Tsumetai ne!

(this is for cold water, cold temps would be "samui ne!")

I mentioned my cousin passed away a while ago (around when I just started to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans). In Japan, after cremation, you keep the ashes in the family home for a while before sealing them in the family grave. Last weekend, my cousin's ashes were sealed.

The cemetery was a 2 1/2 hour drive away, which isn't in itself that big a deal, except the sky saw fit to pour buckets that morning. My mom had bought the Pumpkin Princess and her cousin new plastic raincoats and rain boots "just in case."

I should probably mention again how much the Pumpkin Granny rocks.

DSC00645

The Pumpkin Princess stood for a half hour in the pouring rain while the Buddhist priest chanted and my cousin's ashes were sealed. We were all impressed at how well behaved she and her cousin were (for a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, anyway), and I let her know this.

"It was fun! We were drinking water."

Huh?

"There was water on our raincoats, and we licked it. It was cold and it tasted good!"

Apparently, while the priest was going on about how life sucks and we need to accept life sucks (basic Buddhist doctrine), the Pumpkin Princess and her cousin had been licking each others' plastic hoods.

At least they hadn't been tasting puddles, which was what their second cousin appeared to be doing.

3 comments:

deeje said...

How cute is that?!

The raincoats' clear edging to the hoods is a great design feature that I don't think I've seen here before... but at first glance it looked to me as though Princess and her cousin were wearing Ziploc bags near their faces. Which would probably not be the best design feature.

pumpkinmommy said...

*snort* I agree, ziplock bags near preschool-age faces would probably not be a very good design feature. Clear plastic edging on hoods is pretty common here. I clearly remember having it on the raincoat I wore when I rode my bicycle to high school.

Jbee808 said...

That's adorable!!! Kids are so funny sometimes...