Happy New Year everyone! I hope you greeted the new year with family and friends and good spirits (interpret the last one as you like). My New Year's Eve was rather low-key; I had some friends over at my house and we counted down as we watched the most bizarre television programs I've ever seen.
New Year's in Japan is a very festive affair, rather like Christmas is at home. People spend time with their families, eat, drink, and visit shrines. After Christmas, the grocery stores begin stocking up on colorful varieties of New Year's foods and decorations made of pine and ferns and bamboo. Unfortunately, most of this pomp is lost on a foreigner like me. In an attempt to understand the traditions, I asked my vice principal what one does on New Year's Eve. She recommended watching the New Year's specials on television (that have been already been recorded weeks in advance). Please watch it, she said, and experience a real Japanese tradition!
\Boy was she right. I've never seen such strange things on television (including normal Japanese programming). Most of the shows had performances by famous pop artists and groups, complete with absurd costumes: frothy creations of hot pink crushed velvet suits (and matching ties), slutty plaid hotpants, and Merlin-meets-Faberge rags/robes. But the most amusing ones were about random, shameless pranks and the unsuspecting victims. As the clock struck midnight, we were quickly distracted by a conductor falling through a trapdoor in the stage, landing on a pile of foam cubes and being mauled by five or six bronzed muscle men in Speedos. They tied him up, carried him to a diesel truck and foisted him on a chair attached to the roof of it, and tied him down. Then the truck drove through a course in the woods where he was assaulted with firecrackers, explosions and water hoses. After all that, they slid him onto the ground where he bounced into a giant pool of jelly, and then approached his crumpled, steaming body for an interview. Another channel had a guy stuffing all sorts of objects into his underpants: utensils, action figures, eggs, dish detergent.
After that we dragged ourselves from under the warm kotatsu and walked to the small shrine by my house. But nobody was there!
For the first day of the new year, today felt like a regular day. Sharla and I ate breakfast, she watched Lost in Translation while I tidied up the kitchen, and then we ate lunch before she went back to Hamamatsu. After I saw her off at the bus stop, I decided to bike to Mishima Hirokoji. I was curious to see Mishima Taisha, the huge shrine.
The mood was like a summer festival. It was crowded, like everyone told me. Food stalls lined the paths to the main part of the shrine, and a huge line reached to the entrance of people waiting to pray. Most of them were families with children or married couples. I didn't stand in line, content as I was to wander aimlessly and observe the crowds. It made me feel a little lonely though, as I had no family or loved ones to share the first day of the new year with.
That or the fact that I watched two Sofia Coppola movies in one day (downloaded Marie Antoinette yesterday) and I'm getting all self-introspective. Or I'm drinking too much wine. Meh. So what did you do on New Year's Eve?
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