thanks for sharing,
I was married once (ONCE!!!) to a Japanese lady, it was nice.
Over the course of 8 years, I learned much about other cultures that caused me to question my traditional upbringing. The funeral thing I find curiously cosmetic, we fix up the body so it looks good, and then hide it away before it begins to go bad. Says a great deal about us I think.
My ex-wife told me about how the Japanese Shinto Buddhists deal with death. They wrap the body up, place it on a steel grate high above, and ignited. Below the immediate family has a wake, they eat/drink, and relate stories about the diseased, honoring them, and all they while they act as though the loved one is there with them as they party.
After the meal and cremation, only the most immediate family, parents, spouse, and offspring, gather round the remains and SIFT through the ashes for the bones. They each pick out the bones and place them in a container to be buried and the ashes are divided up among the group.
At each house you'll find alters, usually in their own room, or in the master bedroom. These alters contain the ashes of those they knew and loved, and inside each cabinet are photos of the person. It is believed they hang out near each of their alters, and watch over the living.
I had to particpate in this as well when my wife's grandmother passed away.
The tricky part is how two people have to pice up a bone fragment together and place it in the jar with long chipsticks. I've liver here long enough that they are no second nature on my own but I surely didn't want to be the one fumbling a piece of grandma when It came my turn. But it was fine, I teamed up with my middle son and it went smooth. The mother-in-law place grandmas glasses that she always wore on the top of the bones and then closed up the lid.
The family goes to the graveyard a couple times a year to wash the head stones with a scrub brush and I've gone a number of times to clean up the ancestors graves. And they alos have a little memorial shrine in the house that they will put out some food and right the bell to remember them as well.
That's a fascinating ritual. It sounds like a beautiful way of celebrating life. Death is not to be feared. It's a transition. But here in our culture, we want nothing to do with it.