Happy New Year!!!

明けましておめでとうございます！

Winter break has been going really well. My mom came to visit, and I thoroughly enjoyed showing her lots of cool places in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto. Some of my favorite moments:

-Shibuya crossing 

-Tokyo Tower on its 50th anniversary

-Sushi at the Tsukiji fish market

-the day spent with my host parents

-hiking Fushimi Inari in very cold weather, and discovering snow halfway up the mountain

-turning 21 at Itsukushima Shrine, and a ridiculous Japanese dinner at a Japanese style inn

-realizing that I am actually very adept at Japanese

I had been most of the places we went already, but it was really fun seeing my mom see them for the first (only?) time. We had lots of great conversations about all sorts of things, especially how strange Japan is, what it means to have a hobby, what it means to be skillful at something, how different people travel different paths, being a tourist vs. being a resident, the nature of cities, the bomb... It occurred to me today how strange it is that I have been to Hiroshima, the peace park and peace museum, three times, but I have been to Washington DC only once. 

She left on New Year's Eve day, and I came home and unpacked and relaxed for a bit before going out for the night. New Year's Eve is a different holiday in Japan than it is in America--the important part of the holiday is January 1-3, when you relax at home with your family and eat a very traditional meal (it's the same meal for breakfast and dinner for all three days). So I spent New Year's Eve with Seanacey, my tea ceremony friend, and Kojiro. Kojiro's friend Mamu (an accomplished Japanese fashion designer) moved from Tokyo down the street from Kojiro and Seanacey a few weeks ago, and for New Year's about 10 more of their friends from Tokyo came. Also with us were Joann and Zac, two Whitman seniors last year that I had one class each with and never expected to see or talk to again. So it was a strange but wonderful and very fun group. For reasons I can't explain, I started the night with like 45 minutes alone with the Tokyo friends only, which was a lot of fun. We started drinking and ate some snacks and watched Japanese wrestling (not sumo, like legit wrestling) on TV. Then Kojiro, Mamu, Seanacey, Zac and Joann arrived, we hung out for a while longer, and then went to dinner. We got pretty drunk at dinner and then walked to Yasaka Shrine in the middle of Kyoto's downtown. We were there with thousands of people when midnight rolled around, and it was so cold but we were having a great time taking silly pictures and waiting to enter the shrine. At about 1205 I saw about 10 of my AKP peers who were tired of waiting, and about 1210 we got tired of waiting, and left. I wanted to hang out with those folks some more, but I came home and passed out...

...because I had to wake up at 545 to do a real hatsumode--the first shrine visit of the year, on New Year's Day--with my host parents. We left the house at 615 and went to three shrines. The first one, Iwashimizu Hachimanguu, was on the top of a mountain and we had to ride a cable car to get there. We received a Shinto blessing by a woman dancing around with some bells. For musical accompaniment, there was also a woman with a huge drum, a guy playing a flute, and a woman with small cymbals. The second shrine was called Jounangu. They gave us a little bit of sake and a keychain with a girl sitting inside a soup bowl. Finally we came home and then went to Iseda Jinja, which is a shrine only 5 minutes walk from my house, that I never knew existed because it is hidden inside a tiny alley that I never noticed before. They gave me a sweet soup called oshiruko and a LOT of sake and by the time we left I was drunk. And it was only 830am! We came home and had traditional Japanese New Year's breakfast (including, among other things, white miso soup with mochi, lotus root, egg, sweet black beans, some vegetables, fish, and many inedible-seeming other foods) and then I passed out. 

Today was the first day of Japanese department stores' Bargain week. I went to Uniqlo, sort of the Japanese Gap, and got lots of great stuff for a huge bargain. It was a great deal and it was so funny to see how many Japanese people will turn out for a huge annual sale. I will probably go back to Uniqlo before the week is out.

I hope everyone reading this had a lovely New Year/Christmas/Hanukah holiday season and is enjoying the first moments of 2009!