Saturday, caligraphy, miso packing, and yakujinnsan festival.

Today was a lot of fun. In the morning I helped Mariko-san pack pakages of miso into bags and I helped set up the vegtable cart, putting potatoes in bags and stuff.
An interesting senerio happened when i was putting the miso into paper bags. You know how some pper bags are tougher than others and are more like plasic? Well, I went to put only like 2 bags of miso into a paper bag like that and then Mariko-san asked me to put it into another bag. I thought it was bacuase it was a tougher bag that could take more wight, but the real reason is becuase someone had died and at the funeral they had gotten that bag. So they can`t use in it becuase it would be really bad to give that to one of their customers.
Later on in the day I helped mariko-san in her caligraphy class. actually I didn`t help at all, but I practiced caligraphy almost the whole time and then I did it on a hard peice of paper. It is so pretty! Also, mom in case you are wondering, that Asian lipstick or whatever you thought it was that you got me at a yard sale, it isn`t listick, it is used to sign works of art. You stick your stamp with your signature in it and then stamp the paper. I didn`t have a stamp so I carved HS in an eraser and used that.
At almost 7 p.m. Mariko-san, her husband \, their grandaughter who is like 6, and I went to a festival! It is called the Yakusinnsann festival. Basically . there are three unlucky years in a ersons life. for girls it is 19, 33 and 37 and and For boys it is  25,42, and 61. No one is sure where it started, but basically on this day every year around Japan, people those ages and everywhere else go to shrines and pray to the gods that the bad luck will go away. It is also common for people to do it the year before and after their unlucky year. Other people go to, like us. There are vendors all along the way up to the temple. we went to the temple first. We all got a fortune for this year, basically it says whether you will have a lucky year or an unlucky one. It says this on a  peice of paper. I was lucky. I didn`t really care, but then I went to tie the paper around a rope, where everyone ties them, and I pulled so hard I ripped my paper in half! I started panicking! Does this mean that my good luck is gone now? I ripped the paper! I`m going to have a bad year! NOOOO!!! But then mariko-san pulled a peice of the rope open and I stuffed my paper in there. Whew!
We bought lots of food and brought it home to eat. We bought tacoyaki. mom, remember that? Octopus rolls? Taco in japanese means Octopus. a very easy word to remeber. They roll chunks of octopus in dough, cook it in round balls and then you eat it. Its pretty good. we got some other food too. Aoi, their grandaughter, bought an airsoft gun for her brother. Now we are back home and I have to go pack. ug.. I`m tired I just want to sleep!!!