Yukari Nozawa doesn¡¯t think much about the myriad Shinto, Buddhist and even Christian customs she follows.
There¡¯s the Bon holidays in mid-August, for example, when she visits her family grave in Niigata Prefecture to honor the souls of her ancestors believed to return from the netherworld. She has been invited to Christian-style weddings and has attended Christmas Mass in the past, the latter out of curiosity.
Just recently, she visited Tokyo¡¯s Kanda Myojin Shrine for a purification ritual to dispel bad luck associated with her age. At 31 (or 32 in the East Asian system of age reckoning), she is maeyaku, or the year before what¡¯s considered women¡¯s yakudoshi ¡ª the age of misfortune, according to folk traditions.
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