道なき道: Winter Break Part 2 - New Year Celebrations

[I meant to write this back in January, as you can probably guess from the title. Things have been busy. In truth, life is much busier now than it was back in January. Unfortunately, school itself has become less busy while the rest of life has become crazy. So I sit here at school wondering what I should do to distract myself from thinking about what I could be doing with all this obnoxious free time if I didn’t have to be here despite having so few classes.]

The New Year is a very big deal in Japan. People with full-time jobs have 3 whole days off of work. 3 days for just one holiday. 3!! You may find it hard to believe, but that a BIG DEAL. The only other thing that compares is Golden Week, but that’s a little different since that’s many holidays crammed into one week’s time.

New Year is a time for Japanese people to be with their families. It’s also a time to eat certain traditional foods and exchange gifts. Japanese New Year celebrations are different than in America in this way, and actually more comparable to Christmas. The staying up until past midnight and celebrating is similar, though in Japan you have more respect for your neighbors by celebrating with groups at shrines or parks. There were a few fireworks from near city hall at midnight.

So, New Year’s Eve. Some of Drew’s extended family was in Japan visiting other of his extended family who live here. So we all hung out! You’re probably sick of Nikko pictures, but here are some Nikko winter photos for your enjoyment. (:

Drew's cousin's sons - they and their little sister attracted quite a lot of attention from the natives

something up for the New Year

this lighting was too cool

this view was too cool!

strawberry curry ...

this awesome guy is carving a Japanese version of our name into a wood block

snow!

Kegon Taki in the Winter

we are ninja!

huge kendama

"ga-ru-bi" for Garbe

After all of that, we had some friends over to eat sukiyaki and watch some of the Japan New Year music program that takes place for 3 hours leading up to midnight every New Year. It's called Kohaku Uta Gassen, and they do a "red and white song battle". The most popular music artists of the year are divided into red team (female artists) and white team (male artists). They all sing, and a panel of judges votes on which team wins. The results are announced at - you guessed it - midnight! Now THAT was fun to watch. I wish we hadn’t missed half of it before finding it on the tv.

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あけましておめでとうございます！

It really is too bad we don’t live near a big famous shrine. I would love to experience New Year near one of those sometime. We saw some of those really big celebrations in Kyoto and such on the tv after the music program was over the night before. It looked like so much fun! (Though I must admit it also looked cold.)

We got up early (yes, even after staying up so late) to go visit the biggest shrine we know of nearby. Sugou Jinja is its name. Unlike what we saw taking place in Kyoto shrines and other big shrines, Sugou Jinja’s celebrations were very mellow. Even so, I’m glad we went. Here are some pictures.

kadomatsu

This first one shows a kadomatsu, a traditional Japanese new year decoration. It's made of bamboo and pine, usually. Most have 3 bamboo shoots, and their heights of represent heaven, humanity, and earth. (I'm not sure why the one below had more.)