According to Wikipedia "On the black market, giant clam shells are sold as decorative accouterments, and the meat, called Himejako in Japan, is prized as a delicacy".
...which really doesn't do much to explain the decoration at this rather large dark and dank Mausoleum (is that the right word? Everyone is cremated in Japan and I'm not sure what you call the area - can one still say tomb? The central 5 piece structure is the spiritually significant "gorinto").
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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 2/18/2010 08:03:00 PM
8 comments:
columbarium
Maybe, but pictures found on the interweb suggest those tend to be substantial buildings with shelves containing thousands of urns, whereas these Japanese ones are individual family shrines (and usually rather smaller than this one shown here).
Check W's source of all knowledge. Last paragraph
Dear Bunny,
Yes I'd read that, but it still doesn't quite make sense in the context of what we see. From Wkpd, "either attached to or a part of a Buddhist temple or cemetery" - that implies the columbarium it is the general repository for ashes from many people. I believe that such structures do exist at cemeteries here (when people don't pay the rent on their tombstone, they get booted out to the common repository so that a new family can occupy the tomb) ...but it isn't what we were looking at...which was the memorial area to one individual, which probably contained one person's ashes only, or possibly a family. Actually on the tourist maps they do seem to be called "tomb"s...
P.S. Does it ever concern you that stoats hunt and kill bunnies?
Monty Python (much funnier than Mony FORTRAN) answered that one
Is there a single USAian who doesn't think that MP is the epitome of comedy?
Coincidentally (or not) we watched Life of Brian at the weekend, which I had actually never seen. Things have come a long way since then!
Much preferred the Goon Show. Eli is old. MP is too frenetic and loud, esp Cleese. Never have been able to sit through an entire movie of theirs. Still Monty FORTRAN is a keeper.
Is the clam in situ? It could be a paleo sea level/ climate indicator.
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