Today we went to visit my wife's parents in their hometown of Saka, a few miles outside Hiroshima. With several chain stores, a large college and a police training academy, this would be a good-sized town in Europe, but in Japan, Saka is definitely the countryside. We went to visit the cemetery (ohaka in Japanese) where my father-in-law's parents are interred. Many cemeteries are on mountainsides that are not ideal ground for farming. As you can see, they consist of many marble monuments. You can see my wife's family cleaning the family memorial, placing new flowers and lighting incense and candles. The ashes of my grandparents-in-law are interred in the large central monument, with plenty of room for other family members to be placed there too. The names of the deceased are inscribed just to the left of the main monument. The three plots behind are all other related families, cousins and aunts/uncles etc. The wire fences you can see are actually used to stop wild boar from getting in and digging up the unused plots! Prayers were offered to the deceased, and I was formally introduced to my wife's grandparents. My mother-in-law joked that they would be very surprised to see me there (foreigners are still very rare in rural Japan). In some ways it's a lot less formal than western cemeteries; nobody else was bothered that my wife and I should have a cigarette after cleaning the monument, but I still felt self-conscious smoking in a cemetery! Nonetheless, it was a very interesting occasion for me.