New Years Eve Part II

After a exploring Shiba park and Tokyo Tower we caught a train back home. At the train station nearest to our home is an amazing grocery store. It is one of my all time, favorite places in Japan to shop and walk through, but more on that in another post... The point is I like to walk through the grocery store to get outside after riding the train, whether I need to buy something or not. To my delight they were still open when we arrived. We were slightly tempted to cancel our plans for cooking dinner when we saw the delicious looking food they had prepared special for the New Year.

The fried food looked so good!

This (smoked?) fish, not so much.

In the end we decided to stick to the plan, and headed home with just a small bottle of champagne. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that eating noodles before the New Year was considered good luck in Japan. Something about long noodles symbolizing a long life? I told Louis that even if I was wrong about it being a tradition, that I really like noodles and wanted them anyways. It also gave me an excuse to use a recipe from one of our numerous Bon Appetit magazines for an Asian flavored cold noodle salad. 

It didn't quite look the the picture, but I was happy enough with the results.

Louis didn't mind what side dish I was preparing because potatoes and steak with a cilantro chimichurri sauce were also on the menu. 

At 11:30pm we walked a few blocks to the local Buddhist temple in our neighborhood. At midnight people ring a bell that is at the shrine. They are supposed to ring it 108 times to ward of the 108 worldly sins. There were only around15 people there when we arrived. We waited for midnight to approach and watched the line of people grow. People of all ages lined up to ring this bell. Some people arrived with a wooden arrow. From what we could see and guess, the people were bringing these arrows to the person in charge of the nights celebrations, where they were then placed in a large can to be burned. I bet you they had wishes for the new year written on them. Around midnight (there was no "count-down" to speak of) there were a few announcements made to the crowd in Japanese. Then someone rang the bell. At this point we decided it was cold and we had seen enough to get the general idea of what happens on New Years Eve in Japan so we began to head home. We were very surprised to see that the line had grown to over 100 people. It was over two blocks long!  This is a picture of people waiting in line to ring the bell. I wouldn't be surprised if some Japanese people have pictures of us, the ONLY tourists to be seen, watching the festivities. 

And that, in a nutshell, was how we spent our New Years Eve! Happy New Year!

Alf wishes you a happy and blessed 2013 as well.