"...then I felt something cold on my head..."

"...and I thought it was a towel or something, but then noticed that little Tarô-kun had wiped shit on my head."

Once again one of those conversations you wouldn't have thought to hear at a zen temple. ;) I meant to have a break from zen-blogging, but this was just too funny not to tell.

Honestly, I highly doubt that anything can surprise me anymore - I just make a mental note to myself that "this is Japan, after all", and let it go... For example, I've seen here both sugar that doesn't melt in the oven as it should, and powder sugar that doesn't dissolve into water - now sugar, in my opinion, should BOTH dissolve and melt when heated, so I'm really starting to wonder what is it that we're eating here. Scary...

But anyways, back to the conversation. I did come back to the temple after saturday practise as it had ended quite early and I was in Myôgadani earlier than what I expected. I heard voices inside but wasn't really sure whether the party had already died, so I sneaked to the back of the house to look from the windows - and lo and behold, still 10 people going on. So, I decided to come in for a time. The baby, Yûya (whose parent's seem to live at the temple, but I'm not sure yet of their exact relationship with the jûshoku, maybe they're his sister/brother, or something - also, the man teaches karate with jûshoku) had woken up and came to be entertained by us, and that's how the discussion drifted to kid excrements, among other baby-related things - the jûshoku's son (whose name isn't really Tarô, but I can't remember what the kid's name really is) had apparently shown his appreciation of seeing the monk who was telling the tale by this unconventional method... You see, all these monks usually have a wife and kids, so they're as comfortable talking about family life and kids than world poverty (a subject we got on to later when Yûya and most of the others had gone to bed).

The monk was once a again a funny one. He's been friends with our jûshoku for a long long time, but lives now in Kyoto - they still visit each other from time to time and all the older members of our zazenkai knew him quite well. He's also got a very expressive face, and he was making all of us, the baby included, roll on the floor laughing with his impersonations of his friend: "If jûshoku would be here, he'd say..." Jûshoku looks physically like a tough guy (he's a budoka of many years), but he also speaks in a very very masculine way whenever he's not in his official role (meaning when he's drinking in the upper room after the party in the lower one has moved there and most people have gone home), whereas this Kyoto monk was very slightly built and whole his manner was very different - it was absolutely hilarious to see him speaking rolling the "r" like his friend. We didn't go on later that until midnight, since the party had started at 4pm, so I got to bed around the same time I would have done anyway.

Yesterday I was asked by the guys in our morning zazen why I had to leave so early on saturday, meaning when I left at 3pm, but when I told them that I had actually returned AFTER parctise... Well, let's just say that they were highly amused. *g* And told a first-timer woman about the wednesday party and that I'm always staying until late because I like sake. Well, I should soon get a sign and hang it around my neck that say something to the effect of "this strange foreigner girl likes sake - give me some", the way they are going on about it... But then again, as I said before about the japanese and teasing, it's a good sign. :)