Happy New Year 2009
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year for 2009 and all the best with their endeavours and resolutions. I hope you all had a great time last night and are facing 2009 with a smile and lots of energy!
Japanese New Years food. Enough to put a smile on your face and food to face the day 
This is the sunrise over East Hiroshima on January 1st, 2009. It rose at about 7am, but was unfortunately covered by a cloud bank, which moved on later during the day. To make things even better, it SNOWED for a few minutes today. It was short, but it WAS snow.
I experienced my first New Years in Japan, and it is VERY different. Great emphasis is placed on family time. Also, the first three days of the New Year are more important than New Years Eve. We spent the 31st, after arriving back from Tokyo, just having dinner and watching some special programme on TV, which was fun and all, and stayed up till midnight.
Just before midnight, all (or a lot of) shrines start ringing their bells. They ring them 108 times. Apparently it is because we have 108 sins and it atones for them. We saw on TV a lot of people at shrines for midnight, which was quite impressive.
We woke up for sunrise on the 1st, then went to a shrine and rang the bell and prayed for the new year. I also went for a luck reading (not sure what to call it, but you pick it out of a box), and I got “Best Luck”. There are 5 of them, ranging from Super Bad, Bad, Normal, Good Luck and Best Luck. So I was really lucky!
These were just a few of the many different paintings and sculputures and such that were around the temple.
We came back for brunch, and this was seriously amazing. I really don’t want to rub it in how awesome it was…but…like…omg?!?! The pictures don’t really do it that much justice, but just think MASSIVE obentos, with EVERYTHING in them. From teriyaki chicken, to lobster, prawns, oysters, beef, sashimi, tempura, cooked fish, to so many things I don’t even know the names of, but are super tasty!
I have pictures of the individual boxes, but I won’t torment you with them. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely.
For dinner, we finished up what was left in the boxes, and added a few dishes, like lobster salad, fried oysters among others.
The whole family was here, so it was pretty busy, but lots of fun.
New Years was summed up pretty nicely as: Eating, Sleeping, Drinking and Talking. Family time. For 3 days (or so). We did all of that, and even played some new years games which was heaps of fun.
