New Year's Eve in Japan

Like I said before...New Year's here is WAAAAAAAY different then it is back home. We party with friends, whereas people here hang out with family and go to temples. The city basically shut down in terms of shops and restaurants. The only thing we knew would be running for sure were the trains.

We woke up on the Sunday and decided to go to Kobe. Jame and I had never been there before, but we heard it was a nice city. It took about 1 hour to get there and once we arrived we started to walk in and around Chinatown and towards the harbour area.

Once we exited the train station we noticed some policemen down below on the street. Their car was parked with the lights flashing and and 2 officers were standing on opposite sides of the street with red sticks in their hand and a whistle in their mouth. We had no idea what was going on until some truck turned the corner and the cops started blowing their whistles and waving their red sticks at the truck. It was hilarious! We watched for a while more to see what was going on and Jame and his Dad noticed that a cop in street clothes was around the corner and radioing in drivers who were not wearing a seatbelt. An interesting way to be pulled over! Watch out for the red stick!

Chinatown was neat and pretty busy. Lots of souvenirs and lots of food. Again, because it was a holiday it was hit & miss in terms of what was open.

The harbour in Kobe is very nice. It kind of reminds me of Granville Island, but less funky. We wandered around the shops for a couple of hours and then had to head home because the plan was to catch some shut-eye before heading out to Kyoto to take part in the New Year's festivities. I think we will definitely be going back to Kobe in the future because there seems like there is a lot to do in and around the mountains.

We got home and all had a 30 minute snooze. We woke up, ate a small dinner, prepped our bags and drinks and caught the train to Kyoto at 7pm. We arrived in Kyoto 1 hour later and waited in line for what seemed like FOREVER to take the bus to the famous Gion area. I think it seemed like such a long time because it was chilly!

Once we arrived at our destination we were going to walk around the local shops, but noticed that most of them were closed. We headed towards Chionin and along the way we were surrounded by kiosks selling food, drinks, sweets, souvenirs etc. We knew we arrived at Chioin because of the mass amounts of people heading in the same direction. The entrance to the temple was gorgeous. It was lit up beautifully and the architecture is amazing!

After snapping a few photos we noticed a huge line-up and figured we better join it because it was the line heading up the big bell. We waited in line for about 40 minutes ....this seemed like forever once again because it was sooooo cold. We don't know the exact temperature, but we guess it was approx. -5 degrees. At about 10:45pm the guards at the front of the line started letting about 50 people head up the mountain. Every 2 minutes we would hear a loud gong from the bell being rung at the top of the mountain. In no time it was our turn to head up the stairs. At the top we saw tons of people lining the railings that enclosed the bell. On the opposite side of the bell there were about 20 monks holding rope that attached to a large log ram. They would swing the log and chant for 1 minute then let go of the rope so the log would hit the bell. After all this bell talk you are probably wondering what the significance is.

Like I said before, Buddhism is the #1 religion in Japan and every year on December 31st people bring in the new year with the sound of a bell that rings 108 times. Buddhism maintains that everyone will have 108 worries in his/her life. If one listens to 108 rings of the bell on the eve of the new year, one will avoid disasters and have good luck in the new year.

It was such an amazing thing to experience. Absolutely amazing! Because there were so many people waiting at the bottom, the guards at the top were pretty efficient in getting all the people to move along.

Once we were back down at the bottom of the mountain we started drinking our bevies from home and bought some food from some of the kiosks. I had italian, Jame and his dad had Indian, and Jame's mom had Chinese. We found an area with a heater and ate our food, sipped on some hot sake and about 20 minutes later we rang in the New Year!

On the way back down to the main street we noticed how large the line-up to view the bell had grown. We were so thankful that we lined up when we did because none of us could imagine waiting in line for hours in the freezing cold!

We were so cold so we decided to hail a cab instead of walking to the bus stop and wait for god knows how long for the bus to come. The cabbie got us to the station in no time to find that the only train running back to Osaka was the local train instead of the rapid. That meant we stopped at EVERY SINGLE stop. It took us about 2 hours to get home and we walked in the door at 2:50am cold & exhausted!!

The next day (today) was a lazy day. Jame and his folks ran some errands and I stayed home to give the good ol' back a rest. We are all pretty tired still from last night, so tonight is going to be an early night as we have to get up at 5:30 am to catch the train to Hiroshima.

We hope everyone had a great New Year's Eve and wish you all the best in 2007!