Japanese Tombs

My sister in law, Toots, sent me these photos of Japanese Tombs, taken while she was
working in Okinawa.

She said that the island was beautiful, and their beliefs equally so. They revere the dead,
and tombs are sacred. For the Okinawans to offer to share their tomb with a deceased person
is a high honor. Land isn't plentiful, and they can't bury their dead beneath ground because
of the water level, so she said, they build these above ground tombs. It was nothing, she further
told me, for you to look out of your window and see a tomb. They don't place them where no one
can see, they put them where they can be nearby, close to their loved ones.

One other note that I found particularly interesting. She was telling me that they equally respect
spirits. Once they feel that a place is 'haunted', they will abandon it, no matter what they were doing there.
For example, a millionaire was building a 5 star hotel there. I can't remember how this land was supposed to be
haunted, but anyway, the hotel is built, and they were in the process of placing furniture inside.
Crates of dressers, beds, tables, etc, can be seen even today from the big plate glass windows of
the lobby where they were left after the crew had seen evidence of something otherworldly inside.

Once they decided that a spirit, or spirits were in that hotel, respect demanded that they
abandon the project and let the spirits have it. It literally belongs to the ghosts.

Toots said you can't pay anyone from the island to go in that hotel now.

Thanks, Toots!!

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