- Leave in the morning for the 4-hour drive to Mari's grandparents' house in Shizuoka. It's a very, very old house and in quite bad shape - cluttered, falling apart a bit, old style toilet that drops into a pit rather than flushing. We all sit around a with our legs under a kotatsu (table with a heating mechanism underneath, blanket draped over to keep the heat in). Her family is incredibly, incredibly sweet though. Her grandparents were telling people they had a foreigner coming for New Years, and they were given a cell phone charm (waving cat with chilis) and handmade paper chopstick holders of girls in kimono made out of paper. Beautiful. Her grandfather makes tako - circular kites - and he let me make a little one. :) I painted a koi. Lots of fun.
- Dinner for New Years is soba noodles - something that is traditionally eaten on New Years. And something I can eat!! Thank goodness, because the other thing eaten on New Years is osechi, as seen here. Little boxes filled with various types of fish, octopus tentacles (with the suckers on!), pickled things... I really dislike the texture of traditional Japanese food. Sigh. Mostly avoided that except for renkon, a nifty-looking type of root.
- Couple hours to kill, then off to 2 Buddhist temples. The first one is huge - many booths selling food and trinkets lined up along the way, then a long hike up a hill to get to the temple. There's a huge line of people waiting in line to pray exactly at midnight. We left before then for a smaller temple that her grandfather works for. We rang the huge bell outside at midnight, and sat inside the temple listening to the monks pray before heading home. Mari and I stayed in a hotel (her grandparents didn't want me to stay in such an old house - I think they were a bit embarrassed about it.) Really nice evening though, pretty quiet. :)
Entrance of the temple
Line of people at the temple
Ringing the bell at midnight
Tako kites
- Lunch in Shizuoka (mmm, nabe!!) and wandered around the area a little bit. The area her grandparents live in is on the Tokaido - a route that connected Kyoto and Edo during the Edo period. There was a little building with information about the route, some maps and history and trinkets. Several older Japanese men were there (quite drunk, it was around noon) and invited us in. We had green tea and chatted for a while, mostly about the history of the road and the area - they were very nice, if difficult to understand because they slurred their words a bit.
The Tokaido house
- Finally, on to Nagoya. Here we stayed at Mari's late aunt's house (I thought we were staying at her grandmother's, but her grandmother lived elsewhere.) Her aunt was quite wealthy and had a really nice house. Heated floors!! Very nice when you're sleeping on the floor. We had dinner with her grandmother, who was also very sweet.
- Got up earlyish to hit the mall, in order to grab some fukubukuro - basically grab bags. I was a bit dubious, but picked up some accessory grab bags for 500 yen and 1000 yen ($5 and $10). And damn, they were really good value - got several earrings worth $15-20, plus hair stuff. Fun! We came across a mall pet store there that was... quite a shock! It had a sheep (in a little pen about twice its size, tucked away under some parrots); an odd badger/raccoon looking critter, no idea what it was; an American kestrel, I think; a tiny owl; monitor lizards; sugar gliders; a squirrel monkey... Not exactly pets I think would fit in well with tiny Japanese houses and apartments.
Owlie-burd!
Kestrel? The katakana says American kachuugenbou. No idea what that is.
Badger raccoon thing
- After securing ourselves some nice New Years deals, we head to nearby Nagoya castle. Very beautiful. I liked the kinshachi, or the golden dolphins (...translated as dolphins, but they're not actually according to Mari, they're just fish), on the roof of the castle. I don't have a whole lot to say about the castle, so here are some castle-ly pictures.
Nagoya Castle from a distance.
Whee high!
Cutaway of the original castle
Riding a replica of a the kinshachi!
Took the shinkansen back to Tokyo the next day, and there we go!
I don't want to write a Japanese essay and work on my two final class essays, boo... :(
1 comment:
Happy new year Tash. Your blog is awesome, I love all the photos. Sounds like you had a really cool new year's with your friend's family. Hope you're doing well. Good luck with school. Miss you :)
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