"A" Happy New Year

Yes, we did have ourselves "a" Happy New Year but for some reason our students can't grasp the fact that the "A" is dropped when used as a greeting. Somehow they have added the "a" making a specialized, single event of happiness in the New Year, as we understand it!

Oh well, at least they greet us with something! And so we greet you too with all the happiness for the upcoming new year. Here is a short overview of our "A" New Year's celebrations:

On "A" New Year's Eve we had ourselves a small gathering of close friends. "A" New Year's here is a family event and so we only had our foreign friends over to our apartment for food and fun. Around 11pm we headed to the city park for the special count down. You see, our city castle is turning 400 years old this year (even though it was actually burned down shortly after it was built as it was struck by lightning) and they are having special events all year to celebrate. Well, to open the 400 year birthday there was a special count down with fireworks!!! It wasn't much of a celebration seeing how our group of 7 foreigners were louder than the hundreds of Japanese people there.

In the picture below, this lucky castle "guard", got to pose with all 7 foreigners...one at a time!!!

Later on in the week we had our traditional mochi eating celebration. Mochi is a rice based gooey, stretchy, mostly tasteless, partially edible, cake glob. This is eaten every "A" New Year's by Japanese people. It is to symbolize the hope for a long life due to its stretchiness, although every year people die from choking on it because of its elasticity!! One of our friends came over to show how to cook and eat it. Ours didn't turn out so well since we bought the cheap stuff from the hundred yen (dollar) shop here!

The picture above shows the mochi before cooking.

And here we have the cooked mochi blob.

And finally, in all its stretchiness, the edible mochi dipped in sugared soy sauce!!

Overall it was "A" Happy New Year for us and our dear friends we spent it with!!