Happy New Year everyone! Or in Japanese: 明けましておめでとうございます！ I hope you all had a great celebration, and if not, New Year’s celebrations are generally overrated and never as good as you think they’re going to be anyway, at least in my experience1. However this year, my New Year actually rocked for the first time in a long time. I was just planning to have a small soba dinner2 with two roommates. It was nice because they invited me to eat and cook with them!
Then super last minute, I got invited to go out with a few other roommates. Together we went to Yokohama to count down and see the fire works, then we went to our first shrine visit of the year, known as Hatsumode.
Unfortunately, I was stupid and brought my DSLR but forgot my camera back at my apartment charging, so these pictures from my iPhone will just have to suffice!
The fireworks were pretty puny compared and we couldn’t hear the music :Y
Food stalls and a ton of people lined up to visit the shrine!
Almost there!
Tying our fortunes/おみくじ to the rope!
It was freeezzzzing cold but the food was so good! Takoyaki, amezake, taiyaki, the works! We all ended up not getting back home until 4AM, but it was definitely worth it~ I’m really glad I was able to tag along and spend my New Year doing some cultural events.
