Mystery in the cemetery

The days are cold and short this season.  John and I try to get in a 20 minute walk every afternoon and we usually head over to the cemetery across the street.

The neighborhood cemetery is a nice, cheerful place and as I wander around I go past graves of people that used to live in my neighborhood, I meet school children I know with their families cleaning their ancestors' graves, I nod to the staff member who daily waters the grass around the communal areas.  John and I can work off a lot of calories just wandering the cemetery rows.  Does that sound morbid?  It isn't.

A few months back I came across a grave-in-progress being built.  When I thought to take a photo it was already at this stage...  The chamber for ashes will be in the middle...  The stone placed above the chambers.  The very modern non-slip checkerboard of marble is there for people to stand and pray.

A week later the chamber had been closed with just an area for putting urns still open.  The rectangular stone stand on the left is for the Buddhist prayer-boards with prayers written on them that are repurchased every year.  You can see the tall wooden prayer-boards besides graves in the background.

And then finally the completed grave.  The arch receptacle in the middle is for burning incense.  The two cylinder receptacles are for cut flowers.  Not very visible on the right side is a marble slab for the engraving of names and dates for family members who have passed on.  Many generations of ashes will eventually come to be interred in this one family grave.  This very modern grave has the word JOY written on it which is a bit unusual for a Japanese cemetery.

Among other people I have met when I visit the cemetery, one day I came across an elderly woman.  She seemed to have come from the vending machine area and was heading back into the main part of the cemetery, but when I turned another corner the woman was nowhere to be seen!  How odd.

Weeks later I recognized the woman again walking back from the vending machine area and I surreptitiously watched her for awhile until she was in a part of the cemetery where there was no exit way out.  Suddenly she disappeared behind the bucket and water area but she never came back into view.  John and I actually went back into the area looking down the rows wondering if she had stooped down at a grave or something.  No woman.  Where could she have gone? 

The cemetery is surrounded by the forest and fields and there didn't seem to be much of a way into the forest...  John and I entered the forest where we could, but the path (if you could call it a path) didn't go far in and though John could go under the trees I had to crouch down and still got pulled this way and that by branches.  There couldn't be a way through the forest this way could there?

The day before yesterday I saw the woman again and I closely followed her with my eyes as she finally DID step into the forest and disappeared.  There really IS a path leading somewhere in the forest and yesterday John and I went in where we'd seen the woman enter and we blazed a trail through the weeds and trees...  We came out on a back dead-end road behind a small cluster of homes one of which was a group home for seniors.  I guess the woman has found a way to go and buy a soda or two from the cemetery vending machines without waiting for a bus to take her into town! 

Mystery solved!