Mt Fuji from the Shonan Village Center

I was in Japan for 9 days, accompanying my wife who had a workshop to attend. I should say that we both enjoyed every minute of this trip. Japan is a great place to visit on a lot of counts. It is clean, orderly and people are courteous. Food for vegetarians can be challenging, but we managed really well, with the hotels and conference center going out of their way to accommodate our needs (I am not a strict vegetarian, but I do have shellfish allergy). We also found several vegetarian restaurants in Tokyo and Kyoto.

One of the most disappointing aspect of our trip was the poor WiFi. We took the bullet train a few times and there is no WiFi. Apparently there is a paid version available, which is expensive, but we could not find a lot of details. On the other hand, it turned out to be great in some sense because we enjoyed the ride and viewing the beautiful Mt Fuji a few times from the train. But, even in hotels, the WiFi was slow. They protect the WiFi big time. Each room had its own password regardless of where we stayed. In one case, it was cleverly done. You turned on your TV and a menu item provided the details for getting on a WiFi. I had to use my phone’s cell data a lot in the end.

(more…)

I had to go to India in late January to attend religious rituals after my elder sister passed away unexpectedly. It is customary in India to complete the cremation within a few hours of death, the origins of which have to do with the high temperatures and lack of easy access to cooling technologies. This has changed in recent years. Even now, generally, cremation is delayed only for a few important reasons, one of the most important one has to do with who, according to our religion, should carry out the last rites and how far they have to travel. In my sister’s case, there were no compelling reasons to delay the cremation because the person to carry out the last rite was her brother in law, who was right there. Unfortunately, there was another death in the family during my stay there and I participated in the cremation.

For Hindu Brahmins, there is a fairly long list of religious rituals that are carried out over 13 days after the death of a person. Nowadays there is an abridged version that go on from 9th to 13th day, so I was able to go and participate in these. I learned a lot by participating in these events thanks to the priest’s explanations as things were performed. During these days relatives join, recall past memories and participate in the various rituals. These rituals revolve around donation to some of the Brahmins, offering food to the soul of the dead person and a lot of chanting of mantras, all of which is supposed to help the soul rest in peace. Going into further details is daunting and I will leave it there.

(more…)