December 31, 2006

But there’s still another hour or so until we venture out to the temple. Until then, we wait. For the last couple hours I’ve been sitting in the tatami room with my host parent’s daughters, roasting our feet under the kotatsu (a low table with a heater built in and covered with a blanket) and watching “traditional” television. Sitting around is perfectly fine with me because I’m still recovering after a huge feast of delicious homemade sushi a few hours ago and the idea of moving is distinctly unappealing. Plus, it gives me a chance to observe a little more Japanese TV, which is always an entertaining proposition. It’s still one of those cultural things that I just can’t get used to. The colorful stages and sparkles and talking heads on every single show are just a little too much! Tonight, though, the glitz makes a little more sense: it’s a concert celebration. (I can take sparkly dresses and singers… sparkly dresses and a platypus documentary just don’t go together in my mind.) However, it’s still pretty different: A couple hours ago there was a kimono-clad man singing in traditional style, which wouldn’t have been so strange except that his backup dancers were a bunch of guys in shiny silver Ultraman costumes twirling flags.

Soon Tomoko and Ayako will begin preparing the soba (buckwheat noodles) that we’re supposed to eat around midnight. Long noodles mean a long life.

There are a lot of reasons to eat for New Year’s, apparently. I’d have to say my strangest meal today was this afternoon. Whitney and I were exploring the back roads of my neighborhood with the dog when a man suddenly popped out of a garden, flagged us down, and asked us if we’d ever eaten boar before. Without much further ado we were ushered to an empty table, handed bowls of soup and pretty much left alone to make idle conversation with each other while the few other people that were there huddled around the fire at the opposite end of the garden and giggled. I’ll just chalk it up to the oshogatsu (New Years) spirit.