I must say New Year's in Japan beats out any American celebration by far. I had the sort-of traditional celebration of Japanese New Year's eve. Well, as traditional and you can get here.
First was the 除夜の鐘. (joya no kane, New Year's eve bell) This begins around midnight and you ring the bell at a local temple to expunge your sins from the past year. This is pretty interesting because the bell bonging happens at a buddhist temple and the next day it is usual to go to a shinto shrine to pray. A good example of the mixed religion here.
The bell is in the back there. They had a bonfire and were burning mostly wooden things. They looked like the long sticks typically put behind buddhist gravestones, but I wasn't sure.
They were burning these things.
The monks came out of the altar hall and said something prayer-like and then lit these two torches out front. I think they were praying for the new years or something. People never really listened though. The people behind us were talking really loud and laughing. This shows the lack of actual religion in Japan to me. Everyone bongs the bell but no one knows why.
There is me bonging the bell.
Japanese have no unemployment because of people like this. There were about 10 of these guys all poking the fire. They reminded me of Joel's volconalagist suits. Probably these guys were city workers, and everywhere in Japan there is someone completely useless for taxes to pay for. In America we call these "congressmen".
After the bell bonging we went to Shinjuku because we were going to go to the metropolitan building to see the first sunrise, a big deal. New Year's eve is the only night that Japan goes crazy and runs trains beyond 12:30am. You would think that this country would run trains during the early mornings because people woudl use them, but no. The train was filled with people going from temple to shrine unlike the normal drunk salarymen you normally see in the night in Japan. So we went into an izakaya to pass a few hours. We ended up going to the Christon Cafe, the same place as my birthday forever ago. It was surprisingly busy for getting there at 2:30.
A strawberry and flesh cream cake. Yum.
At about four we left the cafe to go to the metropolitan building to wait to go to a floor they open to let people see the first sunrise of the new year. In every travel guide it just says go there early because there is a queue, but that is not true. We were one of the first people there at about 4:50 but then we found out you need some sort of letter to stand in the normal queue that lets you in at 5:30. They wanted us to wait until 7:30, and told us maybe they would let us in if enough people with letters didn't show up. Lies. I have no idea what this letter was they were talking about, and when I asked I got the strangest answers. We waited in the 7:30 queue until about 5:45 and realised it was too cold to not get to see the sunrise. Since the sun would rise about 6:30. Rednecks. So we headed onto Meiji Shrine.
Meiji Shrine is nearby Harajuku and the Olympic stadium. I think about 3 million-6 million people go to Meiji Shrine on New Years day. We got there about 7am so it wasn't too terribly busy, but I guess about 12pm there are tons of people everywhere.
This is the first gate to Meiji. We got there at a good time I thought. The lighting was really neat since it was dawn.
They had TV screens like this all over telling you where to go.
This is the gate into the inner temple I think. I don't really know the terminology.
Another big gate thing into the inner inner temple. If you can see the giant plaques (called "ema") with dogs on them. 2006 is the year of the dog.
This is the actual temple. Inside the temple were priests doing things with drums. And it looked like important people inside praying. Not sure. But here is where you pray and throw coins for good luck.
This is the white sheet collecting all the coins. They make a lot of money every year just by this alone. not to mention the 1000 yen arrows everyone buys.
Here is Mr. Policeman with his coin-throwing-protecting shield.
They had souvenir booths all over selling good luck charms and the arrows. I don't know why the arrow, but a lot of people had them. I know I should have bought something but I just can't bring myself to buy souveniry stuff in Japan. So far the only thing I have bought was a pin from Kyoto. And it was 100 yen and out of a machine, so I'm not sure if that counts.
Men in red coming to pray. They all wore berets and their jackets said "Safety Angels".
Another view of the policemen and the praying.
At all shrines you can buy omikuji, slips of paper with you fortune on it, and then you tie it to strings. At Meji they had lots of booths were you could buy them and had strings lining the exit ways for people to tie them on.
Japanese commercialism at its best. Right outside the inner shrine was a huge place for eating food from all around Japan. If I would have been more hungry I would have eaten. They had yaki-soba (a sort of fried noodley goodness) from all over Japan. This wasn't too offensive. But then they had these crane machines there as well. Probably good I'm not shinto, I would have been offended. But since Japanese are capitalists before they are shinto I will get offended for them. It reminded me of the story when Jesus threw over the money changers tables in the Bible. Even though Jesus wasn't shinto, it's pretty applicable.
I thought this was pretty impressive. At the Harajuku station, the station people would use for going to Meiji, the JR staff has an exit they use every year just for this day. This is just a temporary ticket machine. Crafty Japanese.
I've been to Harajuku station several times and this exit is just a fence. Just for this day they make it into a proper ticket gate. Crazy.
These are some decorations on doors in my neighbourhood. It's a charm to bring good luck on the new year.
Some more. I forgot the word for these things in Japanese, but when you look it up in english it says "festoon". Whatever a festoon is.
When I was walking back to the station it was abnormally quiet. This is the street in front of my dorm. I could walk out in the middle and take a picture like this. It is never that quiet. Especially at 8:30am. I wish new year's was everyday.
It was amazing to me at least. This dumb road is always busy 24/7.
In Japan New Years (お正月 Oshougatsu) lasts until the 4th. So many more good times to come. This is one of the highlights of Tokyo, by far.
