New Years Vacation Part 2

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Chiaki and I got up Monday and met our friend Megumi at Kuzuha mall and had lunch at Chiaki's sushi restaurant. Chiaki works at a kaiten sushi place; which means that all the sushi goes around on a conveyor belt and you grab a plate as it goes past you. There are different prices for different plates. It was delicious and a very good start to the long day was was ahead of me. I say that in a good way.

Megumi and I headed out to Osaka for the day. We mostly stuck around Namba. She took me around to all the busy places where we saw long lines for he takoyaki and we also saw the kuidore clown. He is situated out along one of the main roads and is a bit of a tourist landmark. You come to Osaka and eat a lot, kuidore, and then you take your picture with the clown. It was really one of the big things that I wanted to see because I think that it's hilarious. The clown itself looks like one of the Weezer band members wearing a red and white stripped suite and carrying a drum around with it. It was also wishing all the people that based by a happy new year. Absolutely priceless in my opinion. Osaka is a big consumer city. Most of the things to do there is shopping. Osaka was a merchant city back in the old days and the lowest social class. They weren't allowed to buy fancy clothes or build huge houses so they spent most of it on food and other such items. Hence making Osaka the city it is today! There is also the fact that it was destroyed during WWII and everything in the city was built afterwards, including the Osaka Castle.

We then headed up to Namba Parks. On our way there we saw the new Hips building. It is the most unique building. There is also a ride that it like the Drop Zone at the state fair. It takes you up to the top, gives you a great view of Osaka and then drops you until you reach the bottom. Namba Parks is a new shopping center that was built over an old baseball stadium. There is a little memorial over one of the old bases. Namba Parks has some great shopping but it also has some great observation areas. It was pretty cold and windy when Megumi and I were there so we moved inside but when it's warmer it must be a great place to shop and get ice cream while watching all of Osaka move under you. I wish it hadn't been so cold while we were there. I would have loved to look around a little more and watch the city, but it was pretty freakin cold.

We headed back towards Namba and into Amerika Mura. America Mura is basically a shopping area with a bunch of American brands and some American flags everywhere. Megumi took us to a little stand with tacosembe. Tacosembe is some sembe crackers that have some ebi flavored rice crispys some octopus, sauce and mayo. It is absolutely delicious. There is also the egg version; which is an open sembe with a sunny side up egg with all the same fixings. They are amazing.

After Amerika Mura we headed back to our respective homes. I got a little lost trying to get back to Chiaki's house but I did find it and headed back to Starbucks for some hot chocolate, a sandwich, and some reading time. Around 10pm I headed up to Chiaki's restaurant and waited for everybody to get off of work.

We headed back to Chiaki's, had some dinner and then headed out with 4 of her friends from elementary school for Hatsumo-de. I still think it's pretty funny to say, yeah we drove down the street and ended up in Kyoto for New Years. Hatsumo-de is the first temple visit of the year and we rang in the new year on the side of the road on our way to the first one; which was closed. We took some funny pictures and then headed out to Heian Jingu. Heian Jingu has a huge torii gate to welcome you, but since it was Hatsumo-de time there were huge numbers of people and the long walk way was lined with vendors selling food and drinks. We walked on in and headed straight to get our New Years fortunes. The thing you do is shake this holder that has a bunch of rods inside with numbers on them. When one rod comes out through a hold you take the number to the maiko, temple worker, pay her and then get your fortune. Mine was bad! After this you go and tie your fortune to long strings with only your left hand. I am, apparently, ambidextrous enough to actually do it. From there we headed out to pay our respects and after a quick tutorial on how to do it, 2 bows, 2 claps, pray, 1 bow, and then headed onto our next stop.

Yasaka was the first temple that I went to in Kyoto when I was a student and it was fitting that we went back for the new year. It was also ridiculously packed and we also, apparently, found 2 more of Chiaki's friends while we were there. We did the routine over again and grabbed some quick food as well. By this time it was 4:30am and we still had almost 3 hours before the sun came up. Thats why we were trying to stay up all night, to see the first sunrise of the new year. We ended up at McDonalds for a couple hours and then headed out to this field to await the sun after it started getting lighter outside. It was ridiculously cold there!! We were all hopping in place to try and stay a little warm. Chiaki took a pretty awesome video of it. The sunrise was beautiful and we ended up back at Chiaki's around 8am and then proceeded to sleep till 5pm.

After we woke up and showered we had the most amazing New Years meal. Chiaki's mom made all of it and we had steamed fish paste, shrimp, chestnuts, dried anchovies, lotus root, scallops, ozoni; which is a mochi soup, dashi maki; which is dashi and cooked egg, chicken with carrot and kidney beans inside, and a whole bunch of other stuff that has so english translation as far as Chiaki and I could figure out. We stayed up till 2-3 and then I actually fell back asleep until my alarm went off at 9am the next day.

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Photos

takoyaki line
this is the first half

takoyaki line
this is the second half

Amerika Mura
awesome graffiti

Heian-Jingu
you can't really see it...