Hi !!
How did you spend ‘Higan (Equinoctial week)’ ??
I made ‘Ohagi’( One of Japanese sweets made by glutinous rice dumpling covered with sweetened azuki beans, soybean flour or sesame seeds) and visited a grave.
I felt the Japanese spirit on the holiday.

I transferred to Ha’apai in Tonga on the 19th of September just 1 year ago.
That day was so hot because the season was changing from winter(dry season) to summer(rain season).
Tonga has a good balance between preservation of tradition and development ,so I did not feel any difficulty for a life. However I remember that I had wondered many times for a while if I was in the same earth, if I was in the same era, or if I was the same human with Tongan.

“ I couldn’t know how to live in account of too many invisible things in spite of my clearly seeing.”

I was nothing but perplexed by small small things at first.
For instance, when I went to a farm, I laughed at that bush which is more than natural farming planting tomato, capsicum and cucumber.
Moreover, they harvest tomatoes when its bottom changes from green into red. I know they wait until it will become tasty, but how they judge it tasty is not understandable.
They are trivial matters like you will say “so what !?”
Now, I can imagine I gave stress to them by bias which I thought there were differences between us or I had better understand that difference.
Although we feel that visual information seemingly reflects a certain reality, now, I feel that might be the most uncertain mysterious. Because visual sense is only one of the five senses and also I have heard that the things will change by our conscious with quantum mechanics. ( I’m sorry if it is not an appropriate expression.)

When we live in different areas, we see different things, feel something different and think things in different ways. I suspect those things make our characteristics different.

For instance, I heard one story of Okinawa from my friend.
“People from Okinawa consider a person as a person who knows at the first meeting, a friend at the second meeting and a great friend at the third meeting.”
Conversely, “HidaTakayama” is one of the famous mountain towns, and it seems to be said that they acknowledged people as people of Takayama after at least three generations live in.

Look! We may insist that it is obvious that the sense of people who live in the hot island and that of people who live in the cold mountain are different, isn’t it ??

I feel that the sense of Okinawa’s people resembles that of Tongan people.
Of course, one big reason was that I was not a normal traveller, but there is no barrier and Tongan people greeted me with eye smiling when we passed each other.

I feel that Tongan people seem optimistic in any situation such as meeting, parting or getting involved in.
I guess the most important thing for them is the moment we are together.

The word ‘live in the moment” perfectly goes with Tongan people.

Yes, Tongan people really enjoy the moment.
Maybe, mostly because they are Kristian, they are not afraid of ‘death’ like Japanese.
( They believe they can go to Jesus after they will pass away.)
So, I think they will be surprised by the word “Karoshi（death from overwork)’.

However, they may be surprised more at our belief which we think we will protect our own home as gods after our death. (It is the thought of Shintoism.)
The god is only Jesus for them.

In either case, the world of death is exactly “ an invisible world “.
It means that we believe in the existence of the invisible world.

Well, even Higan has finished already, Japanese gods are tolerant. It is not too late.

Let’s pray ‘Gods of yaoyorozu’( It means wild variety of gods) and our ancestors with appreciation.
Please give me a good day today, too.!
And please calm down of Colona virus activities !! I want to go back to TONGA !!

What will you hope ??

Author ; Miki Kato