New Years Partying? ... Not!
So, expecting a wonderful new year full of drunkenness and hangovers, I was a little bit startled at the lack of partying. Japanese usually head off to a major shrine or temple to pray, donate some coins to the temples and ring the temple bells. Since Tokyo is so overcrowded many of the major temples are chock full of the natives from new year’s eve until about 5 days later. I even heard one temple usually expects a population the size of Victoria to go through its gates at this time. I had to wait about an hour before I could “pray” at one of the shrines. Then I had to repeat the process with my work colleagues. Well, one good thing is that most companies take a whole week off over the new year period. Not a bad compensation for no Christmas holiday! I did have one enjoyable moment. I managed to visit the Illuminations in Tokyo, basically the city puts up a series of illuminated arches of lights, hard to explain but a photo is attached. Its quite spectacular in person.
One of the strange cultural things is that everyone eats a special dish every new years called osechi-ryori (or what I would like to call “how many dead things can you fit on a plate”?), its basically a cold food platter full of dishes with names that sound like good luck words in Japanese. I probably counted over 50 dead sea creatures. It didn’t taste that great either.
