Today I was thinking about New Year's happening at different times in different time zones, and it reminded me of New Year's 2000 in Japan.
Japan's just barely west of the international date line, so it's one of the first places in the world to get the new year. For the big one, I was up at Mount Aso with a friend who was housesitting (hotelsitting?) a hotel for his aunt. We watched the ridiculous New Year's Eve pop music show until midnight, said woo-hoo, fell asleep (or possibly passed out), then spent the next day recuperating at his parents' house. Which is when I discovered the true magic of New Year's in Japan. Ok, there was the shrine visit and the prayers and whatnot, whatever. No, the really cool thing was spending the entire day lying on the living room floor watching TV, as every hour a different place in the world went crazy.
We were like, whatever, latecomers. We are so over this new year.
3 comments:
heheh, so jaded. Did you eat lots of mochi? That's my favorite part of the new year. Say, do you have any good mochi recipes? I NEED MOCHI NOW and the only kind they have near here is crappy.
oh yeah, what does "oshogatsu" mean?
Oshogatsu is new year...and I don't remember eating any mochi that year at all! I never really liked mochi. I did eat some gingko nuts. Yuck.
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