New Year!

Lawro and me at Roys
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Given my hatred of New Year, our celebrations were relatively low key and we headed to a restaurant in Roppongi Hills called Roy’s for an all you can drink/dinner/music evening. The food was pretty good and it was nice having a constant supply of drinks to get in the New Year mood without having to spend a fortune. The venue also put on a live band so that we dispensed with the necessity to find a pointless, overprice dancing venue for the post midnight bash.

New Year in Japan is traditionally a time to visit the local shrine and make new year prayers to the God’s. So in the spirit of the day, Pete and I headed to Kamakura which is about 50 minutes south of Tokyo and home to a number of shrines and temples. It is also home to the Great Buddha, which is pretty huge! The town was literally packed with Japanese who were waiting patiently for their turn at the most popular shrines. I know very little about the Shinto-Buddhist religion, but my Japanese teacher attempted to give us some cultural information and I learnt that this year is the Chinese year of the wild boar or pig. She also mentioned that as part of the New Year traditions, fortune tellers are situated at the exit of the shrine and will tell you what the new year has in store for you based on the numbers that you pick. Apparently the fortunes can be good or bad – so I think that explains why most of my work colleagues had picked 3-4 numbers so as to hedge their bets!

we dispensed with the necessity to find a pointless, overprice dancing venue