I spent my New Year's in Hikone at Keiko's house. Her brother and his family were there as well so I got to meet her niece and nephew while I was there. New Year's Eve, Keiko and I were in Taga, a nearby town with a large shrine for our New Year's shrine visit. I managed to see a few of my students as well and when I went to say hi, it always took them about 10 seconds to realize who I was. I think perhaps it was difficult for them to believe that I exist outside of the school environment, but then again it was most likely because I haven't shaved in a while.
Actually, I arrived in Taga quite early so I spent a fair bit of time just walking around the town at night. Taga is small town Japan at it's finest. Tons of old houses, narrow winding roads, a stream running through the town and a huge shrine to boot. Create an image in your head of what you think the stereotypical Japanese small town looks like right now. That's Taga.
A big thing in Japan for the New Year is the first time you do certain things and there are certain words for these special things. The top three are probably the first sunrise, first dream, and first shrine visit. I wasn't up to see the sunrise, and I can't remember my dream, but I did manage to get the shrine visit. Another big first happened on that day as well. We got our first snowfall of the year. It had snowed before, but only on the mountains, and never stayed long. This time it was snowing everywhere and actually sticking. It's all melted now where I live though, but we did have a good 5 cm or so.
New Year's day the family headed to Nagashima in Mie prefecture. In Nagashima there is an amusement park, hotel, onsen, and outlet shopping mall. The purpose of our visit that day was for the outlet mall. From far away it looked like a normal Canadian mall which is pretty rare in Japan, but when I got close I could see, that while it still looked like a Western mall, it was set up more like a mall you would see in California or Florida. It was all open air, with covered sidewalks. The colours were brighter pastel colours I associate with warm climates in the States, a lot of bright white. Even the pavement was reminiscent of something you'd see in the States. The stores, were by and large famous American brand name outlet stores with some European top brands and a few Japanese stores thrown in for good measure. Keiko was the only one who bought anything, although I did sample the Cold Stone Creamery they had there. It was pretty good, but too expensive to warrant another go. Not that there are any stores around here I could actually go to...
After Nagashima we headed to a place called Nabana, also in Mie which has the most famous light display in Japan. It costs 2000 yen to get in, which I thought was a bit steep, but once I saw the amount of lights in this place I realized the power bill to run this place for an hour must be equivalent to at least a full year of my power usage. It's gorgeous no doubt, but I can't even begin to think about the number of man-hours used to make it or the price of upkeep. They also give you a 1000 yen coupon you can use to buy anything inside, which is decent. Most of the lights they use look like the normal Christmas light variety and I couldn't help but thinking, what if one bulb blew and then everything just went dark. It would suck for whoever had to find that blown bulb, but since it wouldn't be me, I'd be laughing.
Happy New Year everyone! Hope you have a great one.
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