NEW YEARS

Ok, so for New years I went to Kaori's house and had a big new years dinner there. It was a different experience. The day before 30/31 they make a bunch of special food just for new years. Then on 31/1 they eat and relax all day. In fact, almost everything is closed and the whole town feels kind of liek a ghost town because everyone is spending time with there family. But at night, many young people went to Odori Park and counted down at a concert type deal. It was fun. I went there with some friends of mine. After the countdown, we all went to the Hokkaido Shrine (castle shrine). Japanese tradition is to go the the shrine, thrown in a bunch of money and pray about the new year. It was amazing to see how many people were there. I was really surprised. Afterwords, we went to this bazaar type thing next to the shrine. They had sooooo much good food. We tried to stop at every stand and eat something. Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries on my camera and didn't really take any pictures of that...anyways, here are the other pics:

This is what we put the special Japanese New Years food in...why I don't know....oh yah, because it's pretty!
This is what the inside looks like!!! I WANT TO EAT IT!!!!!And here is the food we are setting up getting ready to eat!! I LOVE SUSHI HERE!! IT SOOO GOOD!!!!! TABETAI!!!!!!!!!! Oh yah, hehehe, we made it ourselves...(I wound up putting too much wasabi in some of them)...ugh..And here is everything all ready to eat!!! It was DELECIOUS!!! I ate a LOT of food!! and it was pretty too right?!?! heheh.So, after the coundown at Odori Park (which I got no good pictures of, sorry) we headed to the Shrine, here is the subway station we started at....huh...guess everyone else had the same idea eh??? SURPIRSE SURPRISE!!Inside the train....arn't Japanese frindly?Some of us inside the train. Yah, Japanese, English, Russian(?), and even someone from Egypt...can you tell who is from Egypt!! I'll give you one guess! *hint: Its not the big Japanese looking guy*We Finally made it to the fron't of the shrine and got to wait in the wonderfull...umm...line? It was actually fun...there were guards at the fron't and they would let a big group go, and then stop the rest of the people and then let a big group go....etc...it was like playing redlight green light!! I WON!!Behind us.........sorry for the blurry pic, I wanted the light so you could see all the other peeps.At the shrine, throwing money, praying, buying good look charms, fortunes, and whatever else.And, looking back from inside the shrine, you can see the line and the guard.....GREEN LIGHT!