あけましておめでとうございま! Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu! Happy New Year!

After a quiet Christmas, Paul and I were ready for a traditional Japanese New Year’s. In Japan, New Year’s is a much bigger holiday than Christmas. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, many Japanese people go to a shrine to offer their first prayers of the new year. We were lucky enough to be invited to spend midnight with Tomomi, a teacher friend of ours.

She and her family live very close to Ike Jinja (sounds like eekay jeenja) or in English, Ike (the name of the town) Shrine. We drove through crowds of people to get to Tomomi’s house, then walked the 5 minutes to the shrine just in time to hear the count down and see the fireworks. As soon as the fireworks were finished, everyone scurried to the shrine to offer their prayers. The huge crowd was festive, yet controlled. I think people were too preoccupied with the Taiko drumming to start a ruckus.

We waited in line for about 20 minutes before it was our time to pray. When it was our turn, we threw our change into the well, rang the bell, clapped twice, bowed twice, then clapped our hands two more times.


We then were ushered to the side where shots of sake were waiting for us. After saying hello to a few people we recognized, Paul and I were getting ready to leave when we were instructed to go back to the front of the shrine. Apparently, another Japanese custom is to throw out balls of rice dough, called mochi, into the crowd. If you catch one of the balls, it is said that you will be blessed with good fortune for the new year. This may be true, but I feel like I was lucky to CATCH the blasted thing. Those little balls are HARD! You’re lucky if you don’t get clunked in the head with one of those buggers. Well, we ended up with three, so hopefully we’ll be in good condition for 2007.
We got home from the shrine at about 2 am, so we hit the hay for a few hours, then woke up to take part in another Japanese New Year’s tradition. For many Japanese it is customary to witness the first sunrise of the new year. In our town of Ito, there are two mountains that have quasi ski lifts running up the sides so visitors can have a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, Ito, and on a clear day, Mt. Fuji. Toshi, my supervisor, told me that the lifts would be open New Year’s morning to shuttle people to the top of the mountain to see the first sunrise of 2007. Excitedly, Paul and I donned our warmest layers and were out of the house by 5:30. As we approached the parking lot, I was surprised to see so many people. I would guess there were about 200 waiting in line by the time we got there. The sun was set to rise at 6:51.




It was 6:47 when we got onto the lift. There was a little bit of cloud cover right at the horizon, but when the sun eventually broke through the clouds, the people started cheering and clapping. A surprising outburst of emotion from the Japanese! The large, piñata-like ball behind us burst open, spraying confetti and streamers onto the ground. It was great! We hung out on the mountain a bit then got in line to go back down.