I’ve talked about New Years in Japan before and the traditional four hour long singing competition between the girls and boys on NHK, Kouhaku Uta Gassen 紅白歌合戦, but this was a little bit special as the girls had a ringer on their team…someone who could sing!
Ms Susan Boyle.
(Apologies for any j-pop fans, but lets face it the girls team are generally awful but very cute, whereas the boys team tend to pull in a few singers along the way).

Susan Boyle and Kimutaku (from SMAP)

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Post tags: Monkey Magic, New Years, NHK, Shingo Katori, SMAP, Susan Boyle, Takuya Kimura

At New Years shops, etc sell what are called Lucky Bags. Basically a closed bag containing who knows what, which you buy for a set price and hope to get lucky!

Similar to those bags you get at dodgy markets I guess, where the first one has something of value and all the rest have broken toasters or what not. (At least I assume that’s the scam). Anyway, these are not a scam, but like a New Years Blind Sale.

This year for the first time I bought one! In fact, I kinda bought two, but I’ll explain that later. The bags range from, I guess, 1000Yen up to 100,000Y or more in boutiques in Ginza, Tokyo, etc where you might find gold jewellery or something inside.

Well, we were wandering around the Ebisu festival in Nishinomiya the other week, and as well as all the food stalls they also have lots of game type things, like a fun fair in England. Darts, catching ducks, fish (live ones), lucky tickets, etc etc.

They also have these stores that have hundreds of PSP, PS3, DS games on display and lucky bag looking bags, supposedly with one of these games inside. This time (probably always), they were half price! Down to ￥500! Well, for £2 you got to haven’t you?

I scanned the bags, picked the one containing the best prize and….

My lucky bag..no DS game

I’ve not had a BB gun before, think they’re illegal in England, but here they’re very popular and you can buy them easily. They have machine guns and all sorts. I tried it out later and managed to shoot my hand. Bloody hurt. Put that back in the box pretty quick.

Walking around a bit more, we came across an off license with Asahi Beer lucky bags! Now these were bound to be better – the guy promised us that there was at least ￥1000 (the price) of beer in there. So I tried my luck　again…

Asahi Lucky Bag

Gonna stick to the off license lucky bags in future, but have to wait till next year now…

Related posts:

1. Free Stuff
2. A Very Pleasant Friday
3. Is That Beer?

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Post tags: Asahi, Free Stuff, Lucky Bags, New Years

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The New Years break is nearly upon us (New Years is big here, Christmas not so, everyone still works on that day). Although they do enjoy Kurisumasu, as I’ve mentioned before with
pizza delivery guys etc. dressing up as Santa, etc.

We’re having our Christmas in Bali this year for our honeymoon but back in time to watch the 8 hour music extravaganza on New Years Eve and the trip to the shrine at midnight.

Gonna miss out on the traditional KFC Christmas dinner and cake. Have to try and find the Indonesian equivalent.

Off to see a Merseybeat band from Tokyo tonight, The Neatbeats! Should be interesting. I picked up a couple of their cds from a market a few months ago and nearly dropped my bacon sandwich when I saw they were playing in Osaka! Gonna try and fashion a quiff and get my drainpipes on. Or I might just wear my Beatles t-shirt and be done with it.

Forgot to mention, for Aki’s birthday a few weeks ago we went to our favourite Kobe steak restaurant for lunch, and this time had the more expensive genuine Kobe steak. This cow was massaged every day and was given a bottle of beer just before she was sent off to become our steak.

Kobe Steak

Our Chef

Related posts:

1. My Birthday
2. Christmas in Japan
3. Kobe, St Patricks Day, 3 Little Bo Peeps and a Man and his Chicken

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Post tags: Christmas, Kobe Steak, Kurisumasu, New Years

So, I’ve covered Christmas in Japan, now on to the big holiday here, New Years. On Christmas Day, no-one said “Merry Christmas” or anything but there’s a whole range of phrases and rules with New Years!

It’s a big holiday, and everyone gets at least 3 days off, though most companies give a week, even Nova when I worked there would close down for a week (they never closed for any other National Hoidays, not even Golden Week).

Leading up to New Years companies have “Bonenkai” which is forget the year parties.
Involving much food and drinking.
As with most celebrations and holidays in Japan there are special foods you should eat. On New Years Eve itself you have soba.

New Years Soba

Mochi

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Post tags: AKB48, Gackt, Morning Musume, New Years, SMAP, Tokyo Tower

New Years in Japan is the big holiday of the year (even Nova closes for a week!). It’s a time when people go back to their hometowns, visit their families, drink and eat lots (lots of special kinds of food too), and probably go to the shrine at midnight New Years Eve or during New Years Day.
It’s much bigger than Christmas here (or Kurismasu), mainly as this is not a christian country, but essentially a Shinto or Buddhist one (hence the shrine).
Christmas is for lovers, New Years is for family.

Any road up, we spent the time off relaxing, drinking sake and eating lots of food. Which was v. nice. On New Years Eve we watched the big music show (a 4 hour extravaganza of all the best music of the year, and kind of a girls vs. boys competition – boys nearly always win, as they did this year), then about midnight we walked up to the Ashiya shrine (a little way up the mountain) and queued up with a couple of hundred people to pray.

Good fun.

Also, in the next “city” to us (City sounds huge, and potentially far away, however it’s about 3 stops on the local train or 5 minutes on the express), Nishinomiya, they had a big Ebisu shrine festival (this is mainly for getting good luck in businesses apparently), and was essentially an excuse for hundreds (literally!) of food stalls to be set up in the streets around the shrine, selling takoyaki, yakitori, okonomiyaki, indian food or kebabs.
Again, good fun.

Each year people buy “charms” for good luck, or safe year, etc. from the shrine, and then, by a genius of marketing, the charms run out after a year and you have to return the old ones and buy new ones!


They also have a big old Tuna here that people put coins on to bring good luck for the coming year.

Now, it didn’t smell, so possibly a fake, but I’m sure back in the day it was real. Couldn’t get close to find out, as it was pretty popular.

As you walk into the entrance of the shrine, some nice priests “purify” you (I guess that’s what they’re doing) with some white paper brushes. They looked soooo bored!

There were several things I liked about this whole religious celebration thing,

a) the free sake – well cost about 10Yen, but that’s pretty cheap for a saucer of sake

b) the fair ground atmosphere, including a ghost maze, and cork gun stalls where you could win Wii’s, PS3′s and cheap worthless cards.

c) the hundreds and hundreds of food stalls as far as the eye can see

d) the shinto followers dressed in the traditional clothes walking incredibly slowly down the middle of the street to the shrine

If only other religions could have such interesting and fun celebrations.

Related posts:

1. New Years in Japan
2. Susan Boyle in Japan on New Years Eve
3. A Very Pleasant Friday

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Post tags: Ashiya, New Years, Nishinomiya, Shinto, Shrine, Yebisu