Legos and Zoujouji - December 31st

It's the last day of 2006, and there's much to do. I helped the family finish up Osouji (like spring cleaning but done at the end of the year when it's cold as hell) and helped keep Haruto occupied in the afternoon. They busted out a huge bag of legos, and I went to town. I resolved to build a super spaceship for Haruto, and spent the better part of two hours working on it. He had long since lost interest in the building blocks by the time I abandoned the work, satisfied with what I had created. I even had a hangar bay with a small one-man vehicle in it for expeditions. Haruto was impressed by the ship, and immediately began to disassemble it after I gave it to him. Fortunately, I got some photos of the finished product before he'd done too much damage. I wasn't upset with him when he started picking off the details of the ship, for such is the life of a lego creation. And besides, I made the ship for him; if it's his perogative to blow it into interstellar dust, so be it.

We had dinner a bit early, consisting of nabe and a few special new years dishes like whole crab and ebi-ten. Yusuke even popped open a bottle of champagne for the occasion. After dinner, Haruto got a bath, and came out of the bathroom robed in the duck outfit my mom had sent for him. Everyone cooed over him and told me to thank my mom for the gift.

I headed out around 8 o'clock to get to Kuramae and meet up with Hans and Billy, both of whom had other guests named David coming with us that evening. We gathered in the entrance hall of the temple and had tea and crackers and played with the Shitzu (Candy and Chocolat, guess which one is the girl) that the head priestess owns. Billy and his partner David, who had been visiting from San Francisco, arrived shortly, and we got up to leave for Zoujouji. Hans rode with the priestess's younger sister, while Billy and the three David's rode in the other car to the temple. We parked and sat in a nearby pavilion, sipping hot sake while we waited for the year to draw to a close.

Moving out of the pavilion, towards the main temple area, we were swallowed by the overwhelming crowd that had come to ring in the new years with the largest bell in Tokyo. There's a buddhist tradition called the joya no kane (除夜の鐘) where a large bell on the temple grounds gets rung 108 times to help rid the people gathered of their 108 desires. The bell at Zoujouji takes four people to ring it once, and it takes almost two hours to finish ringing the bell. Out of a crowd of tens of thousands of people, only 432 people hold tickets that enable them to ring the bell.

And I'm one of them.

The head priestess uses her connections every year to secure a number of tickets for the joya no kane, and this year, she has given us an opportunity that even few Japanese people get. As midnight approached, we squeezed in front of the main temple, where we had a good view of Tokyo Tower and the bell. Several thousand people were holding large white balloons. For the first time in my life, I began the new years countdown in a foreign language. When we hit 1, everyone released their balloons, sending a huge cloud of latex into the air. Some of the balloons got carried by the wind into nearby trees, as if they were clear plastic fruit. At that point, the bell started to ring.

We were to ring the 84th time, so we killed some time walking around the temple ground, enjoying free cups of amazake and watching the various performing artists. I eventually returned to the bell and took some photos of the bell ringers. Pretty soon we lined up and waited our turn. Since there were several of us, I had to move to another group, and ended up with the priestess's niece (who is something of a Japanese valley girl), her boyfriend and his friend. Hans, Billy, David and David were next, and I got a video of Hans being literally thrown by the force of the others swinging the ropes. Afterwards they gave us gift bags with wooden ema, omamori and daifuku, which we ate as we headed over to the temple to make our new year prayers. Finally returning to the pavilion, we had some more sake and snacks and chatted with some of the priestess's young relatives before I headed home on the special all-night new year trains. So far, the year is off to a good start!