Sunday, January 01, 2006

Ringing in the new year *sabbu!*

Brendon and I left the Osaka around 2ish because we didn't want to chuck an all-nighter.

The trains were running longer than usual and we wanted to make sure we were on one of them, nice and warm, then taxi-ed back up to my place. The others trooped on and waited for the first trains around 5ish. Hardcore.

I don't like the thought of sleeping in all day and wasting the day, then getting your bodyclock out of whack and having to get it all sorted back to normal for work the next day. But Brendon and I did end up sleeping in a bit. We just hung out at home then headed to my local Kai Jinja in the evening so he could experience a Japanese traditional new year festival.



Last year I did the countdown there and the cold and late night timing didn't prevent the crowds. This time round it was still pretty crowded and Brendon got to do the whole throw your lucky 5 yen into the box, ring the bell and clap twice.



We were planning to cook dinner at home so we had to restrain ourselves from gorging ourselves with all the tasty 'yatai' - typical festival stall food that includes karaage chicken, yakitori, cotton candy, corn cobs, frankfurts on a stick, taiyaki - fish shaped dough cake thing with red bean paste inside, toffee coated strawberries, chocolate coated bananas, oden, yakisoba, tamago sembei, roasted chestnuts, shellfish urchin thing boiled in it's shell served with warm sake, takoyaki, hashimaki and so on.



After that we bought some groceries, came home, cooked and had claypot chicken rice, bak choy with garlic, and banana smoothies for dinner.

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