Today we made New Year decorations;(o-ka-za-ri) using rice straws.Old Shizusan showed us how to make it.
First, we put the straws into the water to be wet.
Second to make them soft, we strike them with a mallet.
And we braid as these pictures.
After weaving the straws like this picture, we straighten them.
Then we arrange or decorate them by putting 'u-ra-ji-ro', ho-n-da-wa-ra', 'da-i-da-i' and so on to them.
We hang these decorations on the door of the entrance, a household Shinto alter, Buddhist alter, in the well, around the tomb and so on.
We are getting ready for the comming New Year doing like this.
But after his death, my mother-in-law made them.
This year my relative wanted to make them by hand, so I also joined making them.
It is not so difficult as we make simple ones.
I enjoyed making them.