Tea with Elsie: A few photos from Japan.

A reader, Elsie, just came back from a holiday in Japan! Envious...

My last visit to Japan was slightly more than a year ago. The JPY was very expensive then.

With the JPY so cheap now, I hope to visit again very soon.

Here are some photos which Elsie sent to me by email to tempt me:

Cherry blossoms, ladies in Kimonos and rickshaws in Kyoto! Lovely!

Too beautiful to eat! The Japanese are really creative people.

When I visited Kyoto with my family a few years ago, my mother went quite mad buying handkerchiefs and purses. Beautifully made, I can understand why she almost bought the whole shop.

I think Elsie must have read my mind! Totoro was the first Japanese animated fantasy film I watched probably some 20+ years ago. It has a special place in my heart.

Yokoso Japan!

Related posts:
1. Cute snack from Japan.
2. My photos in Japan.

9 steps to destroy back-stabbers!

Heard of  打小人? This is an old Taoist ritual to get rid of villains or back-stabbers in our lives!

I have only seen this done in movies produced locally like "881". I have not seen anyone doing this in real life nor have I done it myself.

Anyway, I Googled for more information and discovered "Singapore Taoism Forum"! I didn't know the Taoist community in Singapore had an online forum. Amazing and rather delightful too.

The steps to ridding ourselves of back-stabbers in our lives are listed in the forum as:

1. prepare a set of josspapers with a paper human figure, a tiger, a scholar, a horse and a red paper with many printed figures.

2. make all necessary requests infront of the Lord of Tiger (Hu Ye)

3. engage ritual masters/leaders to perform the beating of Xiao Ren (paper human figure), if a person knows the name or DOB, can always write them down on the human figure before the ritual starts

4. allow the master/leader to start the ritual by asking you certain questions (some don't ask)

5. ritual start, you will see the master/leader using a clog or slipper to beat hard onto the human figure and do certain chanting or sentences reciting (some can be very misleading and harsh, some can even used crude remarks like dying, handicapped, etc)

6. after the ritual, the master/leader will advise you to burn off the human figure (if still in good shape) with the pile of josspapers (including the tiger figure)

7. the scholar, horse and red paper must be retain and needed to be paste on the wall beside the Lord of Tiger altar, allowing the Lord of Tiger to give you the necessary blessing

8. after pasting the papers onto the wall, the ritual considers complete

9. come back to the temple next year for thanks-giving

Spooky!

So, what inspired me to find out about this ancient ritual? This:

Hey, stick the back-stabber's name and DOB on the head of the figurine and you are done. No need to have 9 steps lah.

On top of that, you would be stabbing him in the front and not the back. More honourable, don't you think so?

Wicked, isn't it? ;p