Eid in Japan

Well, since I decided to spend Eid holidy in Japan, I thought it would be a nice idea to witness Eid Al-Fitar in Japan.

Well… what I have seen wasn’t exactly what I expected.

It turned out that my Okasan (mother) has hosted an international student from Saudi Arabia before. And she knows were is the best mosque in Tokyo to attend Eid. It was located in the Oyama-cho, Shibuya-ku area in Tokyo. You can find the homepage of the mosque here
I looked it up on the internet. The mosque was also dubbed “the Turkish Mosque” to differentiate it from another mosque nearby, called the “Saudi Mosque”, which was quite different in attitude and style.
For example, for me a Syrian, the Turkish mosque was quite familiar. The Arabic calligraphy, the architecture of the mosque were all too similar to Syrian mosques. I was told by a Syrian friend whom I made in the mosque, that the Saudi mosque used a plain design, and has a rather strict policy when it came to men/women separation. Having lived in Saudi Arabia for 18 years as a child and a teenager, I would understand that Saudis interpretation of Islam would dominate even outside Saudi Arabia.
Anyways, the experience was interesting, since I took my host mother (Okasan) and Japanese friend to Eid Al-Fitar. We woke up at 5:00am and we got ready to go by 6:00am. We arrived to the mosque at 7:00am, and, to our surprise, it was empty! I thought we must have surely missed the prayer. But I wondered, where are all the people?

It turned out that in Japan, they intentionally delay the prayer until 8:30am since people need to come to the mosque from remote areas in Tokyo. (I found that quite interesting since in Islam the Eid Prayer should be done around Al-Fajir prayer (which is around 5:00 till 6:00am)
During the time it took us to realize this, I was able to make friends with a Syrian guy who also found it strange that no one was there at 7am. But when the Imam arrived at 7:15am we were told on the new time. He is a medical student in Tokyo university specializing in Cancer treatment. We became friends almost instantly afterwards. We sat together during the Eid speech (which is, unlike the Jumaa Prayer, is done after the prayer.)
Before the prayer started, I saw a Japanese guy who looked Muslim for me, he was one of the Imams in the mosque. He speaks fluent Traditional Arabic. I asked him “How many years have you been a Muslim?” and he answered by saying that he was “2 years Muslim” and he only studied Arabic for 2 years, and he (for my surprise) never visited an Arabic country. He learnt Arabic purely in the Saudi embassy Arabic language courses. Interesting, right?
And I cannot learn Japanese away from Japan??? I’ll show these guys! I’ll be very fluent in Japanese once I am back from Dubai next year!
The thing I noticed the most was the relaxed atmosphere of the mosque when it came to women/men segregation. Ok, so there was a sign saying “women prayer place”, which made me hesitant to follow by female friends in. but I found many men inside that area. Which I found that they are sharing the area with them, due to the limited area upstairs.
Another interesting thing was the presence of many non-muslim people, ladies and gentlemen (of course, being a man, I noticed mostly the ladies ;-) I even noticed some Japanese highschool girls writing down some notes (presumably for a report?)
I was impressed by how my host mom and my Japanese friend were very open about the prayer. They sat on the floor with the other ladies and they listened to the Khutbah (the sermon). They noticed the presence of many Muslims from Africa. Many of which were wearing their native countries’ custom. We even saw an Afghani man with a very long mustache. He invited us to take a picture with him.

Over all, it was a wonderful experience. The Imam (the priest) give everyone the instructions on how to do the prayer in Japanese. The prayer was as we all know it, in Arabic (of course). However, the Khutbah part was quite interesting… He delivered the speech in Japanese first (it was a 10 min speech), then in Turkish, and finally English.
I guess there were so few Arabic people that they didn’t feel there is enough audience to deliver it in Arabic? (or they thought that all Arabs are fluent in English!)