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Published: January 19th 2007
Shinobazu Pond
and Yushima beyondHappy New Year or should I say "Akemashite Omedetô".
Tokyo for New Year has proved to be an inspired choice of time/destination, though inspiration had little to do with it. The two main areas for this trip were to be Mexico before Xmas and South East Asia early New Year. The remaining planning came in stringing these two areas together over the holiday season. Hawaii is an obvious stopover mid Pacific, but what about between Hawaii and South East Asia? My first choice had been Hong Kong, but at time of booking there was no availability to get me in and out of Hong Kong over the New Year? Looking at the map, Japan was the next most obvious choice. I had some vague notion that New Year was quite a big deal for the Japanese, so I thought what the hell?
To say that New Year is a big deal for the Japanese is perhaps even an understatement - it is one of the most important cultural/religious/social festivals in the Japanese calender. Fortunes are read, prayers are offered up, wishes are made and unwanted desires are cast out.
The celebrations stretch several days into the New Year.
Businesses and government offices grind to a halt for two to three days. Many women dress up in kimonos, fewer men dress up in their traditional garb. Celebrations centre around temples and shrines, with many associated rituals.
The principal ritual is Hatsumode or first shrine visit of the New Year. The drill is: toss 5 yen into a box, ringing a bell once, bowing three times, pray and clap twice. It sounds pretty straight forward, but in the excitement of New Year, it is difficult to retain your focus.
Another ritual is Omikuji or fortune telling paper slips. Once you have located a friendly local to translate your fortune for you, you tie it to shrine tree or line to ensure good fortune is forthcoming or bad fortune is averted.
At the Zojoji Temple, near the foot of the Tokyo Tower there is a ritual release clear balloons with prayers attached. Anxious to join in the fun, we joined the lines for balloons at about 10-15pm. We finally rached the front of the queue at about 10-45pm only to find out that you have to have a prayer ticket to get a balloon; prayer tickets were handed
Shinjuku crossing
Aside from the usual green walking man, a chirping bird noise indicates that its safe to cross out in a different line; and the prayer ticket line closed twenty minutes earlier!
Also on the stroke of midnight bells start to toll 108 times at temples and shrines up and down Japan. Each toll is to purge a human weakness - apparently there are 108 of these. The bell they toll at the Zojoji Temple is called Daibonsho. Dating from 1673, this giant bell boasts a diameter of 1.76 meters, a height of 3.33 meters and a weight of 15 tons. As with many things at New Year, you can join a line to join in! This bell is rung with something resembling a battering ram.
At midnight monks start chanting and crowd push forward to get into to the temple to toss in another 5 yen and offer up another prayer. The excitement in the air is tangiable at this point. With the odd exception everyone is well behaved and not drunk, just really excited - and the feeling is genuinely infectious.
After escaping the mayhem of the temple, there is a chance to get some more New Year refreshments. The first thing I got in line was for octopus balls. There are many
Front of the line for New Year balloons
But no ticket meant no balloon and tickets had stopped at 20 minutes earlier :-{ traditional refreshments associated with New Year and the Zojoji Temple had a stall for each and every one of them.
Over the next couple of days, like everyone else in Tokyo, I seemd to spend most of my time in temples and shrines. The fact that nothing else was open might have had something to do with it, but I was getting genuinely carried away with the general excitement of it, uncovering new ritual after new ritual. At Asakusa, the temple/shrine visit is combined with gift shopping! The line files along at glacial pace through a market selling all manner of gift items. These gift items range from "Maneki Neko" or "Beckoning Cat" to little furry wild boars.
A "Maneki Neko" or "Beckoning Cat" brings a business owner a steady supply of customers and/or attracts money or fortune, depending upon which paw is raised.
2007 is the year of the boar. So little furry wild boars are selling like hot cakes. Apparently Boar people are pure of heart, generous and kind. Full of inner strength and courage, they can take on any task. A friend who listens, the Boar is sincere and trustworthy. They are driven by
Hatsumode at Nogi Jinja
The drill is this: toss 5 yen in the collection box, ring the bell, offer up a prayer and then clap twice! their passion for life. Or some such.
Looking for some peace and tranquility away from the temples and shrines you go to a Japanese garden and one of the most beautiful gardens in Tokyo is Rikugien (near Komagome Station on the JR Yamanote Line). Rikugien literally means "six poems garden" and it reproduces in miniature 88 scenes from famous poems. Some Japanese landscape gardens are meant to be contemplated from a fixed spot, Rikugien is a typical example of a "strolling garden".
Aside from the search for peace and tranquility, Tokyo is renowned for its nightlife. The one deciding factor for a night out in Tokyo is whether or not to see the night through. That is the trains and metro start to stop running at 1am and don't start running again until 5am. Taxis are for the uber-rich and there are no night buses. So the question is: in for a penny or in for a pound? Or in Tokyo terms: in for $40 or in for $100? Midnight is the latest time to decide - you may need to hook up three different trains to get back to your hotel. There is the option of the
capsule hotel, but this will cost you just as much if not more than what you will already have paid for your hotel room. As far as where to go there are three main nightlife centres in Tokyo Shinjuku, Shibuya and (the legendary) Roppongi.
Not in Shinjuku proper, but worth a visit is The Fiddler - Takadanobada on the JR Yamanote Line, see map on website. Good for chatting to the irish barman and for in-house band whose covers of 60's songs are of entertainingly differing standards. (Cautionary note: ex-pats living in Tokyo come to The Fiddler and 50% of these ex-pats love nothing better than complaining about, well, anything really. Either their Japanese girlfriend, who is half his age, does not properly understand him; or how he can't go back to England because of what its become or the price of housing.)
Shibuya has a ex-pat style pub - one of a chain, can't remember name - which has a checkout at which you pay; a bar at which you cannot stand; or and a barman to whom you cannot chat. It will serve you an excellent lamb kebab though. Also in Shibuya is the Chandelier Bar
The line for octupus balls
The arrow you see is a good luck charm that is good for one year. At next New Year it will be added to a ceremonial bonfire though it has no official name. If they are having a private party they may not let you in and you may have to come back in an hour - here is a suitable location for an all-nighter, with the distinct danger of falling asleep in one of the couches, though that will get you thrown out!
Roppongi though is nightlife central with the Irish pub Paddy Foley's as a suitable jumping off point or final destination - Roppongi station, Hibuya, Oedo lines. Time zones being what they are, this is where at 2-15am I watched Liverpool lamely capitulate to Arsenal in the FA Cup - and the evening had been going so well up to that point! Cautionary note: the US has a number of military facilities in Japan and US military personnel on leave come to bars just like Paddy Foley's to smoke fat cuba cigars and to make lots of noise!
Orienting yourself in Tokyo is fairly easy. There are two kinds of train line: JR and Metro. Most of the main stations are on the JR line named Yamanote. This is the equivalent of the cirle line in London. Shibuya, Shinjuku, Takadanobada and Komagome
Nakamise Dori
The famous red lantern Kaminarimon or Thunder Gate from above are all on this line. So you just need to get yourself onto the Yamanote line and then off at the right stop. (Roppongi is a short Metro ride inside the Yamanote line.) Both JR and Metro have a kind of London Transport Oyster card. The easiest way to get around is to keep both topped up. If you are planning to travel around Japan your best option is to buy a JR Pass or Japan Rail Pass. This will get you around the JR lines in Tokyo and on all but the NOZOMI mega bullet JR train lines throughout the rest of Japan.
Finding an address in Tokyo can be fairly tricky. Not all Tokyo streets have names and Tokyo addresses are not given by street. The Japanese addressing system is based on wards, areas, blocks and building numbers. The address for The Fiddler is B1F, 2-1-2 Takadanobada, Shinjuku-ku which means 1st basement of the 2nd building in the 1st block of the area Takadanobada 2. When an address is given the nearest station is usually also given, together with the exit number. Better still the website will have a map on how to walk there
Asakusa market
This is also the glacial paced line for the New Year Rituals at Asakusa Temple and Shrine from this station. Failing that try to find a "city map" on the street near the station in English. (Note: "city maps" are oriented in the direction you are looking and not with North pointing up. Once you get used to this, it is actually a better system. It does make the maps within the station less useful since you are looking in a different direction once you hit street level!) It will show all the areas mapped out around the station Takadanobada, find Takadanobada 2 and then find block 1 within that. Walk to block 1 and then look around for what you want - building numbers seem to be of no use whatsoever! (Note: Area numbers and block numbers are marked on lamp posts to help you know where you are.)
Looking to take a trip out of Tokyo, I opted for a trip to Nikko. If you haven't seen Nikko, then you can't say you have really lived - such is the gist of a Japanese saying dating from the Edo period. Nikko's main claim is that it is the final resting place of the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu. The Yomeimon Gate that gaurds the entrance
"Maneki Neko" or "Beckoning Cat"
Business and store owners will usually have one or two of these Lucky Cats. The left paw raised beckons in customers while the right paw raised attracts money or fortune to the shogun's tomb is spectacular with 500 Chinese-style carvings of sages, dragons, giraffes and other imaginery creatures. The settling is mountainous with lakes, tall forest, hot springs and one of Japan's three biggest waterfalls. After Tokyo, the air is clear, the light is fantastic - sometimes too bright for good photography!
Best to do Nikko as a day trip. If you don't have a JR Pass, the best thing to do is get a Tobu Nikko World Heritage Pass. This will get you a round trip from Tobu Asakusa Station; around Nikko by bus; together with entrace all the major shrines. Nominally the bus ride up and down the mountain to the lake/waterfall is an additional $20 but the Tobu bus drivers waved me through when I showed them my World Heritage Pass! A Tobu World Heritage Pass can be purchased
mornings from Tobu Asakusa Station. If you have a JR Pass use this to get to the JR Nikko station. Whether you are Tobu or JR make sure you call in at the tourist office at the Tobu Nikko station for bus information and a detailed map.
A word about my hotel, Jujoh Hotel. Not in
Kimonos at New Year
Tokyoites de rigeur outfits for New Year a fashional area, but still only 10 minutes walk from the JR lines or Metro and short bus ride from Asakusa. $32 gets you a room with TV, albeit it is a 2 and half mat room - or tiny in English. You can book your room via the website. It has communal bathing on the 10th floor. Communal bathing is good for relaxing the muscles after a day spent pounding around the Tokyo public transport system. You first scrub and shower yourself down sat in an open cubicle. You then slide into the football bath size tub and soak. Finally you shower and scrub yourelf down again at your sit down open cubicle. There is also free internet and the communal area has a big screen cable TV. The supermarket next door is good for grabbing some breakfast. The level of English spoken on the desk is a matter of luck and timing. 30% of the time you will be lucky. Generally speaking the male members of staff will speak good English, the female members of staff are there to hand out keys and take in laundry. One nice touch is that you will get your name written in
Omikuji - fortune telling paper slips
Once you have located a friendly local to translate your fortune for you, you tie it to shrine tree or line to ensure good fortune is forthcoming or bad fortune is averted Japanese characters for you at some point during your stay.
A note about cash: you will need lots of it. I found myself spending upto $100 a day, especially on all nighters. Just like many things in Japan, things work a little differently. Your foreign credit card or debit card will not work in a typical ATM. What you need is a Post Office ATM or a Citibank ATMs. Citibank ATMs work 24/7 and if you type "citibank atm locations tokyo" into Google you will see a map of all the locations. Post Offices are dotted all around Tokyo and there is one a couple of blocks from Joyoh Hotel. Post Office ATM facilities are not 24/7 and certainly shut down over New Year holiday.
A word on a guide book for Tokyo: TimeOut. Not to TimeOut editors: please add a section on Japanese gardens, otherwise many, many thanks!
A note about Japanese characters and western characters. Pretty much all public transport has destinations in western characters as well as Japanese characters. On the metro and on trains announcements alternated between English and Japanese and LCD displays switch between English and Japanese. Most maps are in both
English and Japanese. Most young people speak pretty good English.
Finally a note about a fellow blogger/traveller. Please check out the Tokyo blog of Adam Cole at travelblog.org. I shared New Year with Adam and he can actually write. He works in the Navy for American-Japanese relations and is a world away from the US military personnel on leave in Roppongi. Just click the "Search" tab on the Home Page of TravelBlog.Org and enter "Adam Cole".
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Adam Cole
non-member comment
Arigato gozaimasu!
Wow, David, you really know how to capture the moment. I like your style - seems like you've read your share of travelers books. Let's continue to be in touch - and collaborate - hopefully you caught my note about launching joing the journey (www.jointhejourney.cc). Thanks for the nod on the writing; much appreciated. I'll never the times we had - or how you tried endlessly to perfect your arigato gozaimasu (the u being silent, of course). Take care!