Shrine maidens!
2008-Aug-23, Saturday 16:52
...okay, neither of them were actually maidens.
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schoolpsychnerd and I went back to the shrine with a hundred steps to go check it out, and this time the caretakers were there--an old man and his (I presume) wife. I went over to look at the purification pool, which had clean fresh water in it, while she went to go chat with them. I went over just after she was done and she introduced me, using goshujin-san, because they were an older couple. You aren't supposed to use honorific prefixes or suffixes when talking about people who are close to you, but either they realized that we're still learning, or they just thought she was properly respectful of her husband. :-p
We chatted for a little bit. They asked us if we knew Japanese and English, andschoolpsychnerd said "a little" and I said "we don't speak it very well." After that, the old man said, "Well, we can understand you!" which made us feel better. Then they said goodbye and got ready to go. When they saw that we were going to go pray, though, the old man got out again and showed us how to do the purification. We already knew (though he didn't know that), and most of what he said we couldn't understand. After a bit, schoolpsychnerd pantomimed washing her hands and mouth, and he smiled and said, "Dōzo[1]." They left, and so we did.
There was another shrine on the way back, too, but that one's purification pool was totally dry.
[1]: You can translate it a lot of ways, though in this case, it obviously meant, "Go ahead."
schoolpsychnerd and I went back to the shrine with a hundred steps to go check it out, and this time the caretakers were there--an old man and his (I presume) wife. I went over to look at the purification pool, which had clean fresh water in it, while she went to go chat with them. I went over just after she was done and she introduced me, using goshujin-san, because they were an older couple. You aren't supposed to use honorific prefixes or suffixes when talking about people who are close to you, but either they realized that we're still learning, or they just thought she was properly respectful of her husband. :-pWe chatted for a little bit. They asked us if we knew Japanese and English, and
schoolpsychnerd said "a little" and I said "we don't speak it very well." After that, the old man said, "Well, we can understand you!" which made us feel better. Then they said goodbye and got ready to go. When they saw that we were going to go pray, though, the old man got out again and showed us how to do the purification. We already knew (though he didn't know that), and most of what he said we couldn't understand. After a bit, schoolpsychnerd pantomimed washing her hands and mouth, and he smiled and said, "Dōzo[1]." They left, and so we did. There was another shrine on the way back, too, but that one's purification pool was totally dry.
[1]: You can translate it a lot of ways, though in this case, it obviously meant, "Go ahead."
