Kumamoto: toshikoshi

Here I spent the new year with the my first host family. The new year tradition in Japan goes like this: eat soba, visit the shrine, pray for a good year, buy a lucky charm, head back home and sleep. All this takes place in the course of 31st Dec -1st Jan.

For dinner, we basically slurped down two bowls of soba. We, after a long day, were lazy and opted for instant dashi as base for the soba. Nice and simple.

We just made it to the entrance of the shrine at 12am, but oh how crowded it was!

Stuck in the crowd trying to get to the end point to throw in any coin with a hole (5 or 50 yen coin), into this wooden box and pray. I swear this process just takes 1 minute. And we were stuck in the crowd for over 40 minutes.

After praying, we headed to this side to buy our lucky charms. Mama chose it but my host grandpa bought me a lucky charm for travelling (as I will be travelling to Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong before uni starts again for me! ).

What I really looked forward to was the pathway to the shrine filled with food stalls buzzing with a festival-ish atmosphere. We had taiyaki (custard/chocolate/anko etc filled pancake-like hot things), okonomiyaki on a stick, toffee strawberry and fairy floss!

In the process of making okonomiyaki on a stick.

Cute! Toffee (strawberry).



The night spent wonderfully with Mama (middle) and Miyu (right). We've become closer than ever before :).

Happy new year!

Kumamoto: New Years preparations

I headed down to Kumamoto, a country-like city south of Fukuoka, to visit my host family after my few days in Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. It felt so good to be home again with the fam, all exchange memories sort of came rushing back and I began reminiscing about how good Japan was.

I spent the new year with my first host family and here's some of the preparations for it.



My host mum changing the paper for these paper doors. Everything is usually replaced with something new for new years. Preparations for the new year is sort of like spring cleaning...of course I tried to avoid as much cleaning as possible! In our home, we have a tradition of always changing into newly bought underwear for the new year, though I'm not sure if all Japanese households do the same.



Decorating the home with a hand made wreath.



You cannot believe how many postcards my host dad wrote and sent to his friends and employees....over 200! Writing postcards to people you know to wish them a happy new year is a definite must-do for all Japanese.

There was like an adrenaline build-up to complete everything before the new year began!