Of TGI Friday's and Shinto Shrines

We three ladies welcomed the New Year in brilliantly, if I do say so myself. There was ice skating, fortune telling, burgers, and shrine visits. Also, a lot of coffee and a bit of champagne. Morgan, Laura, and I had debated about what exactly we wanted to do for New Year's. As you may have guessed, New Year's in Japan is very different (in some ways) from New Year's in America. Although, I am pretty sure Tokyo breaks that mold. There were countdown parties all around this town. But here the shrines and the temples are overwhelmingly packed at midnight, as the people crowd for the first shrine/temple visit of the year. Meiji Shrine alone, in the first three days of the New Year, welcomes three million people. The line for the midnight opening was astounding.

A temple is Buddhist and a shrine is Shinto, in case you were wondering, though many things cross over between the two. I would love to be able to go into more detail about Japanese New Year customs, but I haven't experienced all that many, nor do I understand much of what I do know. What I can tell is, for the most part, New Year's here is family time. It is a time to clean out the old and in with the new. I can also say with certainty that the decorations are beautiful and the food is delicious.

So, not knowing exactly how to welcome the New Year's in Japanese style the three of us decided to go with a mixed bag of American and Japanese traditions. To begin, we went to Tully's. Not very exciting I'll grant you, and the mocha wasn't all that tasty. Not the most auspicious start. Morgan and I left early to grab some food from the store (for fear nothing would be open the next day) and some champagne for midnight. Below is what happens when Laura is not around to guilt us in to eating better.

After we dropped the food off and put on some warmer clothes it was off to ice skating in Roppongi! The rink is outside and run by a TV station so there was a big screen towering over the rink playing all kinds of promotions videos and previews. We enjoyed taking a break from the skating and creating story lines for what was happening on screen. They got increasingly more dramatic as the evening wore on. As an added bonus, after they zambonied (new word) the ice we got a free ice show! Some professional figure skaters took to the ice and gave us two beautiful performances, with one of the two songs being a fun version of Auld Lang Syne.

Outside the rink after skating

After skating we headed off to Harajuku where we enjoyed a fabulously American meal at TGI Friday's. This included onion rings for an appetizer and massive burgers for the main course. See below for the amazing goodness. We even convinced Laura (who does not have the love of red meat that both Morgan and I possess) to order a burger! Yay Laura!

Yay! Massive burger times! None of us could finish ours. It was kinda lame and we felt a bit  un-American :)

Then we met up with our friend Hashi-san, and Eric and Tauna to wait it out until midnight. We strolled around Harajuku and took in the sights and the interesting people passing by. Eric and Tauna decided to join the crowds at Meiji, but Morgan, Laura, and I wanted to actually go up to a shrine or temple and pay our respects. That would not be possible at Meiji due to the crowds. We grabbed some seats at Starbucks to wait and at a quarter till we headed out to Togo Shrine. The line to the, as of yet closed, doors of the shrine was getting long when we jumped in. There was a large bonfire going to burn tokens purchased at the last New Year's.

The massive bonfire

Waiting in line at the shrine

The countdown began and the whole line started chanting, which turned into cheering at midnight. It was fun to hear the mix of English and Japanese as people counted down. I tried to count backwards in Japanese: "juu, kyuu, haichi, nana, ryoku, go, yon, san, ni, ichi!" But I kept stumbling and couldn't say it fast enough so I quickly switched back to English. Lots of cheers and high fives at the clock struck midnight and the massive wooden doors of the shrine swung open. We made our way through the doors, across the courtyard, and up the steps to the shrine itself. We tossed in 100 yen coins and bowed. I was too swept up in the moment to do the full prayer properly, but I certainly wasn't the only one. Then we had sweet sake, hot and delicious, and paid for our fortunes. Hashi tried to translate for us, but, since they are fairly abstract in nature, it was difficult to understand. I do know that mine was apparently "middle lucky". I'll toast to that.

With Morgan, Laura, and Hashi after paying our respects at the shrine

New Year's fortunes! You shook the tube thing until a stick came out and then you  handed the stick to the person working there and they gave you the corresponding fortune. After you paid for it of course :) Middle lucky for me!

After that Hashi steered us towards Meiji to catch the train back. Many of the trains run basically all night on New Year's. The area around Meiji was crazy and but we were able to crowd onto the second train that came. And so we three headed home and up to my apartment (I'm the only one with two chairs and a table that folds out so we party in my place) for some champagne to end the evening. We drank out of coffee mugs just to be classy. I had trouble opening the champagne. See below, courtesy of Laura.

I only noticed she was taking pictures at the end, silly me, I was too wrapped up in trying to get the damn thing open and they were too busy laughing and taking pictures to be of any assistance at all. 

But I won the battle in the end. Yay for being classy with the coffee mugs!

And thus our New Year's Eve ended in style.　乾杯! Cheers!