Shouts of "Happy New Year!" will be frowned upon
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
30
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Kyoto,
Kinki,
Japan
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Japanese fashion was in full force tonight. Teenagers wearing crazy 80's gear, the guys sporting hairstyles that probably took longer to do than the girls. But somehow the Japanese make the 80's look good. Amongst the huge crowd, you can also spot a few crazy fashion trends such as a pair of girls wondering around in strange bear outfits. Trying to concentrate on people watching rather than look at the chopped up bits of octopus tentacles in trays on every other food stall I headed back to the Temple just before 7pm, for one of the main events of the evening.
This basically involved huge crowds all squeezing round two small hanging lanterns filled with wood sticks with prayers written on them. These play the centre roll in the Okera-Mairi festival. They make up the holy fires. People buy a length of straw rope, light it from the fire and then take it home to light the hearth.
Ropes for the holy fire
They use this fire to cook with in the morning to bring good luck for the year. Of course in the age of electricity and gas, this is non-too practical these days, but people still fight their way through the crowds to light their piece of rope, and then spend the rest of the night enjoying swinging it around in circles to keep it burning whilst terrifying people who pass by a little too close. So I stood with the rest of them, camera at the ready, waiting to snap the action. The action turned out to be, the crowd was parted so a few priests could walk through. They lit the fires. They went away again. Everyone politely elbowed each other out of the way so they could light their piece of string. I was slightly baffled as to what all the rush was, considering the fires burned all night. Yet another thing I didn't quite understand!
And so the crowds slightly dispersed. I stood around for a while. A lot of people were queuing up to receive a little ceramic dish with a drink. I wanted to know what it was about. I tried asking a few people who worked their, but rather predictably, non of them spoke English. I then tried my luck and asked some Western-looking people if they knew what it was about. They didn't, but after a lot of debate, me and the girl decided to queue up and receive the dish. We wanted one as a souvenir! So we joined the long queue, we stood out like sore thumbs. We threw our 100 yen on the board with the rest of them. After studying the money carefully, to presumably check it wasn't monopoly money, the priest begrudgingly waved us on to get our dish and drink.
Octopus anyone?
The liquid turned out to be Sake, and was actually the first time I tasted it. It was quite nice actually. Once we had safely stashed our little dishes, we decided to go find a bar, rather than wait around in the cold for midnight. On the way, we popped in the shop to buy some toe warmers. After buying the toe warmers we had to go back into the shop to ask what we were meant to do with them as of course the instructions were in Japanese. Wondering down the crowed streets, we struggled to find anywhere. Eventually asking in a shop, and with the help of a few relevant hand gestures, the lady drew a map for us to a little bar. Of course the bar was shut when we got there. When we finally did find a place, it was very Japanese, i.e. tiny, modern and expensive! After trying to learn what happy new year was in Japanese and giving up, we decided it was time to head back up the street.
And we got a bit of a shock. The whole street had been shut down to cars, and was filled with crowds. The crowds were surprisingly young, in fact, there were very few people over the age of 30, and they were walking in the opposite direction. We tried our best to get back into the shrine, trying all the entrances, but the security guards were having none of it. After a quick pit-stop for food, we headed back round the front of the temple. The only way we knew it was midnight, was from the very quiet and stifled "yeah" that a few people dared to cry, followed shortly with a united, "is that it?" from the handful of westerners in the crowd. It was the biggest anti-climax ever, thousands of people taking over the whole street, when effectively they were forming a giant queue to get into the shrine for Hatsumode, the first shrine visit of the year. Where were the 108 temple bells we had been promised would ring?
A few days later, I met someone who had been in Tokyo at the time. Also slightly bewildered as to where the best place would be for new year, they ended up at Shibuya, the worlds largest pedestrian crossing. Apparently everyone cheered at New Year. When the traffic lights turned red, and the pedestrian lights came on, everyone ran into the middle of the street to cheer. When the pedestrian lights turned red again, everyone made their way to the pavement. This happened for a good half an hour. I witnessed something quite similar in Kyoto I guess, only without the cheering, and instead, it was just that the queue moved forwards a bit!
And the crowds didn't get smaller, not the next day, or the day after that, or even the day after that. In fact, 5 days later, they were still as big as on New Years eve. The shrines and temples were full of people snacking on octopus balls and rattleing the pots containing numbered sticks to get their fortunes. Expectant faces read on as the little bits of paper told of their luck.
