明けましておめでとうございます

Happy New Year! Kyoto style!

There are a lot of traditions in this old city and I like them a lot: they involve a lot of eating!! There are many things that need to be eaten and many of them seem to depend on where you are.

The basic schedule of the day was: Eat, go to the shrines and temples, eat some more, lie around a bit and relax, then go to the public bath, eat some more, drink some sake, and then go to bed. My kind of day!

Eating: The general idea is to prepare box-food on the 31st, and then eat from the boxes again and again throughout the New Year celebrations. A. and I went to a department store to buy some of the contents of our New Year's box. It was very busy, and the food all looked amazing!

A.'s box looked like:

Our New Year's supper:

Shrines and temples: I was too sick on the 31st to stay up until midnight, so I didn't get to go see the biggest bell in Japan be struck 108 times for the new year. However, by morning I was feeling a lot better and I accompanied my dad and A. to a bunch of local shrines and temples to give donations and pray. The shrines are of the Shinto religion and the temples are Buddhist. The snow we got on the 31st made everything really beautiful!

We walk up a lot of stairs:

and we arrive at...

Note: Snow is rare in Kyoto, and this much snow in particular is very rare. According to my landlady Y. this is the most snow that Kyoto has seen in 30 years!

Public bath (sento): Basically a really really hot time... You wash off first at little showers and then go into the actual baths. We went to a local sento, so it wasn't too big or crowded. There were three hot baths (I wasn't even able to get into the hottest one), one cold one, one with a large jet massage thing, and one with electric current going through it (yes you read that correctly, it's very very odd and quite painful. I only managed to stand in it for a few seconds). After soaking in the baths, you get out again to wash your hair and A. introduced me to a Korean massage... and I became obsessed with it (you use this glove to remove dead skin, it's disgustingly fascinating!). Then it's off to the sauna (in which I lasted about 2 mins) in alternation with the cold bath. Yikes!