New Years!

Happy New Year! I had a lot of fun ringing in the new year here in Tokyo! I headed out to Shibuya to meet up with some friends, and we counted down to midnight out in the street, on the scramble crossing with all the big video screens. They stopped traffic through there, and it was really crowded but still really fun. I guess Shibuya is the Tokyo equivalent of Times Square over new years! Afterwards we headed out to a club nearby - on our way there, we ran into a shrine, and it was a really odd location for a shrine since it was right in the middle of the clubbing/love hotel district. We stopped in for a minute (partially because they had a fire going and we were all freezing, haha), and tossed in a few yen and rang a bell for luck for the new year. We left the club around four am and headed for a Sukiya, which is sort of the Japanese equivalent of a Waffle House except with higher sanitation standards. The trains still weren't running by the time we finished, so we decided to head up to Meiji Shrine in Harajuku. It was a little bit crowded! Everyone goes to shrines here on New Years though, it's Japan's New Years tradition. Despite the cold, we washed our hands and mouths at the place where you do that (aunt sam and mom, you remember that ritual right?) and tossed some more yen and made wishes for the new year. Then I bought a souvenir, it's an arrow and I guess it's supposed to protect your home? I just thought it was cool, haha. Check out the PICTURES. I'm spoiling you guys with all these pictures lately : p The little piece of paper next to the arrow is a fortune, there was a place where you could shake a box full of sticks, and whichever number stick came out corresponded to the fortune you were given. I got number 7, and one of my Japanese friends tried to translate it but according to him it says that I should become a person who is better than bamboo. I'm guessing something was probably lost in translation there, haha. After we left Meiji Shrine we split up, some of my friends went to catch the train home but a couple of us decided to stick around and watch the first sunrise of the new year from one of the pedestrian crossings in Harajuku. Then after that I finally came home, and tried to get some sleep but the sun streaming through my giant glass doors onto the balcony made it kind of hard, so I decided to go ahead and write up this post : p