Yearly meeting

Last week I attended the yearly hamlet soukai were everything gets decided for the next year, and any local office positions are voted on. Last year Tomoe attended because we did not know that only the "men" of the house are supposed to come but this year she stayed home (she says it is to not embarrass me, but I think it is because the meeting was quite long last year). It is followed by a quick ceremony at the shrine next door, for which we pay a shinto priest to come from Iiyama. This priest must have the least worries about unemployment of anyone in Japan - with 23 hamlets in our village alone, and many more in the surrounding villages, and three or four ceremonies per year that he presides over, he is busy all year, and all he has to do shake a tree branch around.

Of course, as with any meeting, this was followed by emptying several bottles of Sake. I guess that makes it worth the long meeting that I only understood about half of.