The Sweet Virtual Hereafter

[image error]For centuries, when you died, your ashes were interred along with all the relatives who had gone before, in a family grave. The current generation would come to visit you and spruce things up and pay the yearly maintenance during the o-Bon holidays. Nowadays, having your urn stashed in a family grave like this will run you $20,800 at this particular Tokyo temple.

The Japanese way of death is changing fast. With drastically fewer kids being born, there are fewer surviving relatives (or none) to take care of family graves, and some people don’t even have enough relatives surviving to bury them when they’re gone, not to mention pay the yearly fees that maintining a family plot requires. Many people are rethinking spending the kind of money that was once routinely lavished on death duties.

But all is not lost! In a bid to hang onto the lucrative business of ushering souls to the hereafter, more and more temples are introducing virtual gravesites.

[image error]Instead of being interred in a dedicated bricks-and-morter crypt, those wishing to pay their respects come to this spic & span suite of visitation rooms…



[image error]…and the temple staff calls up stored images of the dearly departed on the video screens. Flowers can be left, incense can be offered, prayers said, and DONE. The actual urn of ashes is stored somewhere out of sight. This option is a much more affordable $4,800



[image error]If that’s all a little too virtual for you, a halfway solution is having your urn stashed in a crypt with countless others. Relatives can offer flowers, incense and prayers at the place where you’re actually stored, but not have to pay the steep price of a dedicated gravesite. This one is an initial payment of $4000, then $2800 per person thereafter

(Sorry for the wiggly pictures – I saw this billboard advertising gravesite options outside a temple, and the snapshots leave something to be desired!)

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If you love a good read, you might enjoy The Last Tea Bowl Thief too

“A fascinating mix of history and mystery.” —Booklist

[image error]For three hundred years, a missing masterpiece passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, indelibly altering the lives of all who possess it… read more

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