Happy new year

Last year we failed spectacularly to do anything to celebrate the New Year, which is a big deal in Japan. As I understand it, you’re meant to go ring a bell at midnight, then go to bed and sleep in for ages, then wake up mid morning and have a massive meal with the entire family gathered around. Or something like that.

This year, I’m happy to report, we managed at least to do part of the above. There was no unseemly staying up until midnight but we did manage to compromise our beauty sleep by getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go for a walk up the local mountain and watch the sun rise on the new year. The kids were intially unimpressed at being roused in the cold and freezing dark but put in a good effort, all things considering, and we made it up to the allotted meeting spot on time and joined up with the Yanamotos and headed off to trek up the road in the pitch dark with our torches to the top of the mountain. Felix had trouble maintaining his energy levels along the way:

But he made it up eventually, just as the sun was about to come out:

Ruby was tired out by the experience:

But at least they had good reception up there.

And there were hordes of other people there too.

Although it should be noted that most of them came by car, the wimps.

Tragically when we got to the top the clouds completely obscured our view of the sunrise, but it was a good experience nonetheless. And I got to brag to everybody that I had in fact already seen the sun rise with my own eyes on my epic trek with Mr Nishihara last February.

Then we got home and waited for our very own feast of special NY goodies, brought around to our place in various trays and pots by none other than the Nishiharas. It looked a little bit like this:

Sadly we all had to eat off the small table because we’d given our big table away the previous day (to a good home, of course).

The feast included a special type of sake that everyone has to sip at, or in Felix’s case take a huge gulp of. (He was rapt to have a legally sanctioned opportunity to consume alcohol.) It gets served from its own very special ancient traditional serving set:

The feast included massive crab legs which Ruby had never tried before. Unusually for our princess, she willingly took on the challenge of eating her Very First Crab Leg:

The meal was lots of fun, and it turns out that Jan 1 is much like Xmas day in Australia, where far too much food is consumed and alcohol is drunk, and everyone then sits around in the afternoon feeling bloated and playing with the new games/toys (this year it was Felix’s excellent new Sushi Tower Game, where you stack up the plates and bits of sushi etc. on the revolving sushi belt until they fall over then you have to pay for it with tiny plastic Japanese money).

And of course there were masses of leftovers which we ate for dinner as well as lunch the next day. All in all, a highly convivial festive season.