Dance of the Hachimangu Shrine Maiden

Big fluffy snowflakes were falling when the alarm went off yesterday morning. It was our first, and probably last, snowfall of the year. Not a single flake remained on the ground when Reiko and I caught the 8:37 train for Kamakura.

Hachimangu Shrine, our destination, was dusted with snow when we arrived. We had twenty minutes to kill before the Shrine Maiden was scheduled to appear so I wrapped my frozen fingers around a piping hot can of vending machine coffee and feasted my eyes on an early flowering plum tree. Spring is coming. Hurry up, please.

As 9:30 approached, we scampered up about 3,000 steps, filed our shoes on shelves in the foyer of the main building, and tiptoed across an icy marble floor to a space with chairs and space heaters (for purposes of this blog, the word "room" will only be used when referring to a space boasting four walls).

Just as I settled into a chair and started massaging my numb tootsies a young man in the loveliest shade of pale blue floor-length culottes beckoned us into another SPACE (open to the elements)where we knelt on tatami mats and awaited the Shrine Maiden's arrival.

Kneeling in Japan entails resting your fanny on your heels, a position I'm able to sustain for almost seven seconds before screaming in agony. Shifting my weight to my left hip exposed my right ankle, but only momentarily because a Japanese lady about ten years my senior sprang forward and swaddled my foot in her cashmere scarf. She then proceeded to remove her down jacket which she laid over my leg while assuring me she was plenty warm in her thin sweater.

I would have argued the point, really, had the Shrine Maiden not chosen that exact moment to make her entrance. Imagine if you can a female Catholic priest in a bright orange cassock topped by a pure white, heavily starched linen chasuble. She wore her hair in a ponytail that hung nearly to her waist, with all but the last couple of inches concealed within a white tube that looked a lot like a paper towel roll with just one sheet left on the roll. In one outstretched hand she held a leafy branch from which a golden ornament bobbed. She turned this way, she turned that way, she knelt, she stood, and then she left the SPACE. We bowed a couple of times, clapped twice, then bowed again.

A trio of young men in those aforementioned pale blue culottes handed each of us a shallow cup of sake as we left the SPACE. We downed the sake (some of us more desperately than others), stacked our cups, and received a little package containing a commemorative sake cup.

The promise of that commemorative sake cup is what motivated me to show up an hour early for the monthly Ikebana program. Next year I intend to borrow a page from Denise's book and glue foot warmers to the soles of my feet before I leave the house.