a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the departed (deceased) spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.
What this means, in practice, is that the whole town gets together and stomps around in the street and yells a lot and drinks. Literally everybody comes. Some people go in costume, and we had guests including Lady Gaga re-imagined as a Buddhist deity and Michael Jackson (complete with, inexplicably, an entourage of children). Pretty much anything goes, as long as you more or less follow the very simple guidelines of the dance and are loud. It looks like this:
Of course, I wanted to really get involved as much as possible, which required the help of two separate people:
Whew! The dance goes for about an hour and a half, with a few hundred people going around in a circle and the rest standing around observing. I wore traditional Japanese sandals for the dance, which during that hour and a half implanted themselves in my feet in a manner that would be the envy of aspiring piercers anyway. They haven't healed yet.
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