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MN: What was New Year's like at your house?
RN: What?
MN: What was New Year's like at your house?
RN: New Year's, far as I know it was nothing, we just, they all used to come over on New Year's Day or Eve and we would pound mochi. They would come over, all those bachelors, they would come over to our place, they would pound mochi. And they had, they made everything, they improvised the mochi thing and the pounding, and I guess they got the rice from, they got the rice shipped in from Seattle, I guess. But, well, they used to drink on the Shogatsu, I remember that. [Laughs]
MN: Your parents were not Christians, but they, did they celebrate Christmas?
RN: The kids did, yeah. We had a Christmas tree. We had presents. And they were Buddhist, my father was a Buddhist. In fact, my father on certain days, he would put on a Buddhist, a Buddhist robe and conduct a Buddhist ceremony with a few bachelors that came over. [Laughs] Yeah, he was a Japanese priest. He had a, he had a, he never wore it all the time, only a couple times a year. He would put on the Buddhist robe and everything, conduct Buddhist songs, not songs but, you know.
MN: Do you know what kind of Buddhist ceremony he was doing?
RN: What?
MN: Do you know what kind of Buddhist ceremony your father was conducting?
RN: [Shakes head] You got to figure we were all young yet.
MN: So you said during New Year's a lot of the men came over, there was mochitsuki and drinking. Did your father drink?
RN: He never drank. He kept sake in the house, but he never drank.
MN: Did your parents smoke?
RN: Yeah, my father used to smoke, my mother used to smoke. My mother used to, I don't know why, it was back in Montana so I remember, she used to get or buy someplace Bull Durham. It was a loose tobacco in a little white sack, and you got to roll your own cigarettes. They have a package of cigarette paper, tear it out, she'd roll her own cigarettes and smoke it. And my father used to smoke cigarettes.
<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.