from notebook:
(7/9)
I woke up at 5:00am and went to the morning ceremony at 5:15am. I sat in the front row and soaked in a lot of the giant shrine before the ceremony started. A monk lit some incense and I wondered if the ceremony would end once the incense burned out. The monk started chanting and soon the few others joined him, and it was relaxing along with... sort of difficult due to unusual leg positioning (seiza for like 15 minutes, then half 3/4 seiza for another 15min). Since I had already thoroughly examined the shrine in front of me, I wanted to close my eyes and meditate. But I wasn't sure if that would be disrespectful or not, so I kept my 5am drowsy eyes open. After about 30 minutes of chanting and bell ringing the incense burned out and the ceremony ended. The head monk said some stuff to us (well, to Megumi) in Japanese about how a baseball game inspired him to write one of his speeches for his talking tour which he will do... somewhere. Reminded me of when the Reverend at the Palo Alto Buddhist temple tied in his speech about his search for advice about which plasma TV to buy with another speech about the hungry ghost realm. anyway when I stood up my knee was totally dead. conclusion: it was a lovely ceremony and I planned on going to it the next morning, too.