What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 43

The moral may be not to go looking for life’s lessons in Japanese magical giant testicle raccoon myths. Tanuki share our own raccoon’s lack of salivary glands, and will wash a sugar cube in water, until there is nothing left.
Robyn and I carried on through a bamboo grove, to the ancient yagura burial caves, containing statues and remains of resting Kamakura samurai. Then we hit another sign. Walk This Way... The God of Happiness (Hotei) is waiting for you in the Cave. Robyn and I found the Laughing Buddha statue of Hotei, god of good fortune and happiness. After having been touched by generations of Japanese wishing to improve their luck, Hotei’s discolored belly, left earlobe and index finger were worn smooth and rubbed dark.
We left downhill, towards the Kita Kamakura Station. Behind the street that ran to the left of the front gate was the house where movie director Yasujiro Ozu lived in the 1950s. Ozu got news of his fatal cancer, as I did, on his 60th birthday. The grave he shares with his mother at Engaku-ji temple, which we didn’t get to visit, bears no name- just the character ‘mu.’ Nothingness.