Happy New Year Japan!

The incense

Water Trough

Wishes

NYE food stalls

In Japan the dominant religion is Shintoism and Buddhism so new years is more of a religious holiday while Christmas is the social event...the opposite of us. The holiday is all about the first visit to the temple (Shinto) or shrine (Buddhist) of the new year. And the new year celebration lasts several days. This meant that most museums and such were closed from 31 Dec to 3 Jan. But the shrines, temples, restaurants, and shops were still packed all night long.

First stop for new years eve was of course the a temple, the Senso-ji temple. The temple was lined with rows and rows of stalls selling food and souvenirs. After browsing for several hours, Jared managed to pull me away from all the chopsticks (although we came home with quite a few). There was a line to see the temple itself. The temple was beautiful...traditional japanese architecture, wooden sculptures and gold trim. But entering a temple is quite confusing, so when in doubt do as the Japanese do...

First is the trough of water with long ladles. This appears to purify you and the water is poured using the ladles over your hards and even rinsing out your mouth. Also, there is a large incense burner in the front which is believed to bring healing. You can buy a small incense stick, bath yourself in the smoke, and set it in to finish burning in the incense burner. Once you have entered the shrine a coin is thrown in the offering box before you say a prayer.

After our visit to the temple, we were ready for some more shopping. And there is plenty of it...Omato-sands high end shops and then the crazy and cheap harajuku shopping district for teens. The Japanese have a style that is all there own...fur, bows, boots, and doll-like dresses. And they actually pull it off. It is quite inspiring.

As the evening turned, we planned to head for a shrine, Meiji-jingu shrine. The shrine is set in the middle of a very large and forested park with lanterns lighting the way. While this ambiance was very mystical, the amount of people was shocking. I guess it should have been expected as it is just like our fireworks where hundreds flock to the see the show. There was such a backlog of people to actually enter the shrine it was going to take hours. But luckily there are once again many many stalls set up along the way with all sorts of goodies...we had noodles, pork dumplings, yakitori (chicken and beef skewers) and chocolate covered bananas. A word to the wise though, don't eat chicken in Japan. They prefer their meat very fatty and while this provides for some delicious melt-in-your-mouth kobe and wagyu beef, it is not enjoyable in terms of chicken.

On new years day we opted for more "normal" activities. We visited the suburbs of Shinjuku and Shibuya. Shinjuku is home to Japan's high rise buildings...all five of them. For a city of 12 million people I think this was one of our biggest shocks. It is also home to the red light district. Shibuya is a very busy shopping district. We grabbed a coffee (at Starbucks) above the famous Shibuya crossing where more than a million people cross the street each day and just watched them all pass by. That was unfortunately our last day in Tokyo and we had a great last night as well. We spent it at Tokyo tower, all lit up with fantastic views over the city, and a teppanyaki dinner where we had a wagyu beef tasting. We both agree that spending more money on a better steak is well worth it!