(Ms.) Tomo Kimura’s Translation/Tokyo Notes

I attended a funeral this summer, so I’ll write a little about it. After the body was cremated, the staff gave us attendants these huge pairs of chopsticks. When the remains came out, the staff first picked out the “nodobotoke” (literally, “throat buddha”, called so because it looks like a person sitting; in English it’s the Adam’s apple) and put it aside. We were then told to pick bones from each part of the body, and place them in the urn. I think it was when the urn was almost full that the nodobotoke was put in. We then all grabbed the top part of the skull together, and put it in the urn, like a lid over the other bones. This urn then gets placed in the family grave.