Happy New Year!!!!

Omedetou Gozaimasu! Happy New Year everyone! Well, I'm finally back online. I safely got my family back to the old U S of A, despite the crazy new airport precautions, and have a lot to report about Christmas and New Years in Japan. Christmas I think I've more or less talked about already, so I won't waste too much time on that, but New Years was a whole new experience. New Years in Japan is a lot like Christmas in the US in that it's the big holiday where everyone makes the long trip back home to spend it with their family. It's riddled with lots of traditions and you get off lots of work for it. Festivities start at 11:45 on the 31st, where the night owls trudge out in the cold to their local shrine and wait in a line (of 2000 people here at our shrine), for the Taiko Drums to signal the start of the New Year, and then everyone proceeds up the steps of the shrine to pray to the god of the New Year, asking for luck and fortune. After this, they proceed to a tent erected especially for the occasion, where the shrine staff (myself included) have stockpiles of charms and fortunes to sell. You see, all the religious memorabilia that people have bought in the previous year are thrown away in a special basket, and new objects are bought at the new year (often with that year's symbol on them [i.e. the Year of the Tiger]). Some of the goods we sold were typical Omamori (cloth charms for specific needs like luck in studies, safety on the road, fortune, love, etc.), small tiger statues, banners with tigers on them, arrows with wooden prayer placards fastened on, wooden praying boards, Daruma (specific dolls, where you draw in one eye and make a wish, and then draw in the other eye when it comes true), and then fortunes, where you shake out a stick with a number and get the corresponding fortune paper. I manned the fortunes until 2 am, before turning in. Other things about New Years: offerings of double-stacked, round mochi (chewy, beaten rice) are offered to the god of the new year on altars in the shrine and in houeholds, and are then eaten on the 7th, ending the New Years festivities. Special chopsticks are used from the 1st to the 3rd, when they are discarded. Special bentos (lunch boxes), filled with specific foods (all of which have a meaning) are eaten. Every morning for 7 days (I think), people in the family wake up and, using a special pot and stacked cups, drink sake for the new year. White folded paper is tied on everything in the shrine to indicate that god resides within. On the days leading up to the 1st, families perform 'spring cleaning' to encourage the god to enter their home. I'm sure there's more, but I won't ramble any longer about that.

In other news, January 2nd is the big shopping day. It is Japan's response to America's "Black Friday," only on a grander scale, if you can imagine that. Today's word is: fukubukuro, which means a grab back. In conjunction with sales, most big name stores, even brands like Gucci, etc., offer grab bags, which are suprise bags, usually costing between $50 and a couple hundred dollars, though the mysterious contents always add up to be much more than what you pay for. Some stores' grab bags, or fukubukuro, are so sought after that people line up two days before to be sure that they will get one. I, myself, participated in this crazed shopping frenzy in a much smaller way, by going to Shibuya with my mother and buying a $50 grab bag from my very favorite store, FrancFranc, which is like a trendier, better version of Pier 1. Inside a nice sized, zip up picnic basket, I discovered two cup and plate sets, gray and pink, two face towels, gray and pink, bath fizzes, gray and pink, something else I've forgotten, and a Panini maker. Wow! I was so excited. I love FrancFranc. Anywho...5000 people packed into the 109 building to secure their grab bags that morning, and everyone else came out later I think, because boy was Shibuya packed.

Well, I've got one more month left of classes before my two month long spring break, and it's officially crunch time. I'm desperately trying to find the motivation to write my big research paper, but I keep putting it off. Gosh I hate school, and to be honest, I think I'm officially ready to come home. Oh well, what's another 200 days, right?

In more important news, I have just finished the first Korean Drama I've watched in probably a year (oh how I've grown to hate the formulaic, sappy Kdramas). I must have taken temporary leave of my senses to be goaded into starting one, but the promise of only 16 episodes (as opposed to 26), was tempting, the storyline sounded diverting, and it was sealed by founding out the guy from the Itaewon Homicide movie was the lead (a man who, I have since fallen in love with). And the reason I bring this drama up is to encourage anyone and everyone to watch it. It is, by far, the best Kdrama I think I've ever seen. It does have it's stereotypical moments (it's a Kdrama, what do you expect), and melds Goong with Coffee Prince, but does it better. And what-ho, it actually had a satisfying ending, something I'd all but given up on for Korean shows. So, I encourage everyone out there to go to dramacrazy.net and watch it right away. You won't be disappointed. It's called "You're Beautiful" and it's about a would-be nun/young girl who, because of reasons I won't bother with, must pretend to be her twin brother in a boy band, thus dressing up like a guy, but of course, our hero (a guy with a troubled, painful past) soon uncovers the truth, and together they go through hijinks with the other main characters to try to keep her real identity a secret until her brother can take his rightful place in the band. And of course, it's a love story too. I mean, take a look at this guy. If he's not enough to make you want to watch the show, I don't know what is.

PS, I uploaded more pics here: http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/celebgil05/Family%20Visit/

And here's a preview for the drama. It's a little long, but (ignoring the first 40 goofy seconds) it basically sets you up for what the show is like. If you end up watching, you have to keep me updated with what you think!

More Randomness

So, I forgot to mention that on my Shinjuku trip, I saw my first Buddhist temple. This week is what the Japanese call Ohigan, which is the week when everyone goes to visit the graves of their ancestors, and they burn incense and bring flowers and I suppose pray for the deade. Here in Japan, they practice three different religions, typically. For births, and such ceremonies, they have the Shinto religion, for weddings the current generation typically does Christian, church weddings (though there are more traditional Shinto weddings), and then for death, they have Buddhist funerals, which is why Buddhist temples have graveyards. Here in Japan, no one is buried, but rather, everyone is cremated, so the graves are just monuments with the deceased's name on it, and there are particular rituals that go along with the funeral (the passing of bones with chopsticks, the switching of the top flap on the kimono, etc). But anyways, there is a striking difference between the looks of a temple and the looks of a shrine. For instance, a Shinto shrine usually bears the colors red and gold, and besides the main shrine, there are usually smaller shrines, either guarded by a fox, a dragon, or a dog. Shrines have the 'gates' that you've seen in my pictures, which look like open doorways of sorts, and they also have a water basin where you scoop out water to wash you hands at the outset. On the other hand, Buddhist temples seem to tend toward the more earthly tones of green and stoney grey, and the areas are decorated with stones bearing carvings of Buddha everywhere. Also, they have the graveyards, and the one I went to was very lush with greenery. So, that was interesting.

Other things I've noticed here: there is little to no celebrity news what so ever. Not that I'm particularly sad about that point, only a little surprised. The only celeb news I've heard the entire three weeks that I've been here has been about the starlet and her husband that were arrested for using hard drugs. Another thing, the mosquitoes will eat you alive. No joke. I've got more mosquito bites on me now than I think I've had in my whole life. So, that's miserable. Also, honey is ridiculously expensive. And, everyone here under 35 is goregous. I mean, gorgeous, both the guys and the girls, and so stylish too. How they even decide who to make celebrities, I'll never know, because no one is better looking that the other. I don't know if that's just because of where I am, in the city, or not, but Americans don't hold a candle to the Japanese youth right now. So, that's all for now. I've uploaded more pictures, so if you've got time, check them out, and I'll ttyl!

Shibuya and the Matsuri

Word of the day: matsuri (mah-tsu-ri)n. it means festival.

So, I went to Shibuya yesterday, but I won't spend much time talking about that, because all I did was get overwhelmed, pop in a department store (walls were closing in on me) called Don Kihote for some towels and wash clothes (a single washcloth cost $3), and then I went to the Tokyu department store at the Shibuya Station (the great white building sitting on top of some of the train lines), and to it's basement to look at all the lovely foods there (Jiffy peanut butter, marshmallows, and tons upon tons of artistic, designer looking cakes and whatnot).

Rather, I'm going to talk about the Matsuri we held at our shrine today. Evidentally, the god that supposedly resides in this particular shrine in Ikejiri, is who you pray to for good harvest and stuff, thus the timing of this festival. At the beginning of the festival, they bring out all the omikoshi (portable shrines), which this shrine here has four, and then the priests call out what I'm assuming are blessings on them, while the head priest, my host father, goes and says the same stuff over the big omikoshi that they didn't take out today, but which comes out tomorrow. Ours has a phoenix on it and has something to do with some lady (lady goddess?), and in front of this one are offerings of vegetables. After the priests are done, the workers present heave the portable shrines off to trucks and stick them in the back, taking them and dropping them at different edges of town. Slowly, with the help of police for traffic, and taiko drummers and chanters, people carrying the omikoshi go around the town all day, showing it off. In the main courtyard, food stalls and a toy stall for children is set up, and prayers or blessings (don't know which) start to get hammered onto this huge wooden billboard looking thing. The main shrine is open, but only certain people can go within, and they sit and drink and do calligraphy, while others come up the stairs to offer prayers. (They shake these colored fabric strips with bells inside, clap their hands twice and pray. On other stand, tea ceremony and flutists are on display.

About halfway through the day, my host mother took me and a friend upstairs and dressed me up in a Yukata (a simpler version of a kimono). It seems she has had special classes to teach her how to dress a kimono. She was so good at it, and she even gave me a butterfly bow tied in gauzy fabric for my back. After that, everyone we met on the street was very friendly and complimented us on our yukatas, saying that they were very pretty, and suited us. At the end of the day, I got to sit up in one of the buildings on a platform and participate in tea ceremony, which was, as always, awesome. It was the cool green tea, so we got chairs, thankfully. And now, I'm totally bushed. It's pouring buckets outside, and it's dark now, but there are still people down in the courtyard, listening to some live singer they have, and if I wasn't so tired, I'd go join them, but for now, I think I'll call it tonight. The big Omikoshi comes out tomorrow, and I think I'm helping with that, so later! (I added more pics to the 'First Few Days' file, as well as making a new file for the Matsuri).