Happy New Year all o' youse!

00:00 has been and gone, and we're all happy just queueing up...

Beautiful temple though...

Well, we got a free street car to one of the biggest temples in the city (we were given a free can of coffee upon disembarking) and joined an ever-growing queue of people down the temple steps and into the street. A fuckload of people. Chihiro and I were unsure about when the hour rolled over, since all our timepieces were different and no-one else seemed particularly bothered. I insisted on a kiss at around 00:02, but she was pretty embarassed amongst so many (Japanese) people.

In the temple itself there were a few customary things to be done: Throw a 5 or 50 yen coin, which both have holes in them, into a fairly difficult to hit wooden box, ring a bell, clap three times and make a short prayer; Stick your head into the mouth of a big red-faced lion (?) mask thing so it can bite you and clack it's teeth; Buy omikushi, a slip of paper with a difficult to translate fortune written on it, that comes in six different flavours, very good, good, slightly good, slightly bad etc. I got good, Chihiro got slightly good. You then tie the fortune to a tree branch, I think if you want it to come true - not sure what you do with the bad fortunes...

Later of course, there was plenty of traditional foods to be eaten back at my place, where, as I said, there was no party (!), including long noodles, a fancy lunchbox made up by Chihiro's mum containing an assortment of meaning-laden bite-sized foods, and rice-cake mochi.

Also sent and received approx 3000 emails on my cellphone, with well-wishes coming in from 1 o'clock up until 8am ish.

So. Weird in the lack of countdown, party or much social interaction. Good because I chose to return home a day early from the snowboarding holiday, where there were heaps of Aussies to party with, in order to spend it with Chihiro, and as a close friend said, it was 'good for the soul'.