JOINED PALMS

Gassho is a Buddhists salutation originally from India in which you join your left and right palms together before eating a meal, offering a prayer at a temple, thanking or asking a favor of someone, or a variety of other situations. In India, Thailand, and some other Asian countries, people join their palms as a way of saying hello, which however, is not the case in Japan. The Palms Up Together emoji is the one Ritsu uses most frequently on social media but hasn’t the slightest idea of its sacred significance—a human and a Buddha becoming one as the right palm (Buddha) and the left palm (a human living in the secular world) are brought gently together.