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This post is a little bit late, but I’ve got good reason — I’ve been busy celebrating New Year in very normal Japanese style, happy to say!

Last week I posted about my Christmas/Birthday celebration, which was very nice. I went to Fukui to see Yumi sing, and then had my Birthday/Christmas “home party” dinner at Minako and Hiro’s house. It was a great party! We talked a lot, had some really good chicken, hand-roll sushi, potato salad with apples in it, champagne, wine, and (of course) Christmas cake (Japan’s staple Christmas food).

Then, on actual Christmas, I had to work, but it was an easy week — only 3 days — so it wasn’t really a hassle. One of our teachers is transferring to Toyama after this New Year’s, so it was her goodbye week. A little sad, but also happy for her. After work on the 27th, all of our staff went out to dinner at an izakaya and karaoke to celebrate our End of the Year Party. New Years is the biggest holiday in Japan, and every family and every company, and every organization within a company, has a party… so most people end up going to many parties (to where it becomes tiring and troublesome for many people).

My actual vacation started on the 28th, and I’ve been having a very nice and relaxing time… watching movies with my friend, going shopping, etc. It was forecast to snow, so I went out and bought a lot of stuff — a winter coat, new sneakers (my boat shoes and spring jacket were not cutting it in the December cold), a new cord and blanket for my kotatsu (an amazing Japanese invention that combines a table with a heater), gloves, a hat, and some PC stuff so I can build a more powerful wi-fi antenna. (The person I normally steal my wi-fi from must have gone on vacation, because his router is turned off… so I have to use another spot which is quite far away and pretty touch-and-go from this distance.) (Another fun thing about Takefu is that it’s so small that whenever I go out, I almost always run into one of my students… and today was no exception; I met two of them at Uni Qlo where I bought my winter gear.) I also cleaned and reorganized my room, and it’s really nice and cozy now. Wow… every time I go shopping I’m floored by the cool new computer stuff. The new generation of printers is so sleek and sexy, and pretty professional too… I think whenever I go home, I won’t need to use a print shop anymore! It’s really tempting and difficult to keep myself from buying a new PC, so I think I’ll have to ask my parents to ship my home PC after all… >_< I really need it!

My shopping spree was right on time! The next day, the snows began. And boy did they begin! It snowed for two days here, and we got about… 50 – 60 cm? It’s really wet, heavy snow, perfect for snowballs and snowmen, and absolutely beautiful. It’s been alternating between snow, heavy snow, and hail, and sporadic bits of sunshine, but the views I had on New Years Eve and New Years Day were just breathtaking:

My Christmas/Birthday boxes came from home (Thanks Mom and Dad, and Angel!) and I was really lucky to go and get them from the PO before it snowed! It’s an uphill ride to the PO, which I don’t know if I could have made in the snow… and the ride back home with these two enormous boxes duct-taped to my bike would been a lot more difficult than it already was. But I was super happy at all the wonderful US food I have now! If only I hadn’t just gone grocery shopping! Yay!

On the 30th, I went to a friend’s house to make mochi, a tradition New Year’s activity, with her family. Basically, you make these enormous globs out of smashed, cooked sticky rice, and then when they’re steaming hot, you take the glob out, form it into little cakes with your hands, and mix it with flour, or grated radish, or other stuff. It was fun, and really delicious! Then we drank, and ate, and talked a lot (I’m impressed at how much I was able to say and understand).

On the 31st, I had a relaxing day at home (cleaning and rearranging as I mentioned earlier), and at night I went back over the their house to celebrate New Year’s. Japanese New Year’s is in some ways a lot like US New Year’s. There is a huge TV event with songs and competitions, with all of the year’s most famous performers. We played some games, and drank and ate a lot (on New Year’s we eat soba, which is famous in Fukui, so it was quite good), and talked a lot too. Then at midnight, all of the shrines in Japan start ringing their bells loudly and slowly (180 times, I think… or was it 108?). We put on our snow clothes and marched out in the snow to the nearest shrine (across the street) and everyone took a turn to smack the huge bell with a log on a rope. Fun! Then we went inside and everyone prayed for the New Year. Afterwards, we stood outside under the awning for a long time and just watched the snow falling on the ground, the graves, the statues, and the buildings. It was so pretty, and so quite… you could hear the sound of the snow hitting the ground, and the echoes of the huge bells from other shrines far in the distance, and the occasional phthump as huge masses of wet snow slid off the roofs. It was such a beautiful and serene experience!

After that, we walked across town to the traditional knife-making spot, but they were already finished making knives, so we walked back and played in the snow on the way. The road is just a narrow raised section, surrounded by rice-paddies in ditches on both sides… so it almost felt like walking on an endless bridge in a sea of snow. Occasionally, the hail and snow would break, and looking up we could see tons of stars! Not as many as on the Great Lakes in Boondocks, Michigan or other places… but still a very beautiful sight. Living on the opposite side of the world and seeing the same stars at night, and thinking the same things as everyone else makes you realize how small the world really is, even though huge distances, or histories, or cultures might separate us. After it began to snow really hard and we couldn’t see the stars anymore, we tried heaving the huge clumps of snow off the side of the road into the water channels on the side of the road. We got a few of them, but others were just to heavy, and we got soaking wet from sliding in the snow…

So then we went home, drank and ate some more, watched movies, and eventually went to bed. I slept in a closet room underneath an electric blanket… Man it was cold! No central heating in Japan… most people just use oil-powered space heaters. They work really well, but they only heat one room… so while that room is nice and cozy, in the rest of the house you can see your breath. Going to the bathroom sucks (in fact, the bathroom window was just wide open, because… why the hell not?), and every time someone opens the door to go in or out, there’s an icy rush. But even so, it’s fun! Oh, and I brought some of the Little Debbie Snacks that Angel sent to me, and the nuts’n'bolts from my mom, and got to share some US food too. Yay!

In the morning, we woke up for traditional New Year’s breakfast… osechi and ozouni… hard to describe, but the former is a really fancy and artistic arrangement of foods that won’t spoil over a few days, and the latter is a kind of miso-and-mochi soup. Sake and green tea too. And everyone got their New Year’s money envelopes. (They gave one to me too! :-O) After that, games, TV, and eating all day. The TV shows were funny, and I understood a little bit of one… about a man who missed his family on New Years so he ordered a substitute father from a rental service. After that, we were tired so we slept for a few more hours. In the afternoon it started to snow again, but right before that I managed to get some awesome photos:

Then we went back to my house, had some Mac ‘n’ Cheese and watched the rest of my US Christmas movies. At night, I painted until late and watched a bunch of other movies by myself (haha Grindhouse!)… what a nice New Years Day!

Today, more relaxing and painting. Tomorrow Kyoto. It’s a great week!