The Year of the Dragon
Celebrating the New Year is a big family and religious holiday for the Japanese. Shogatsu is a serious family time when relatives travel great distance to share even a few hours time with each other. The New Year is celebrated Jan 1-3 and most businesses are closed. During this time, the Japanese will Hatsumoude - pay homage for the first time of the year to a temple or shrine. Upon arriving to the shrine, many people wait in long lines, then must wash their face/hands to cleanse themselves before they pray. One will go to the Haiden, bow, pray and then throw a coin in the offering box. We visited the Futenma Shrine that is about a mile from our apartment. At this shrine, they had little items you could buy to write your prayers on and leave tied at the shrine. They also had an area where you could receive your "fortune" for the new year. The shrine was busy all day and night for the three days of the new year. The streets are lined with food vendors and some dress in their kimono's to visit the shrine. The Japanese most visible sign of the new year is the Kadomatsu - a pine and bamboo decoration that most households and businesses display to welcome God and the New Year.
For New Year's Eve - we had booked a hotel room and had planned to celebrate the new year at the Peace Prayer Memorial Park. We had read about the Fire & Bell Observance with prayers being offered to the 230,000 who lost their lives during the battle of Okinawa. Moments before the stroke of midnight, the flame of prayer descends from the bell tower to light participants torches as they welcome the new year. A choir sings, the Bell of Peace is rung as participants light their torch from the large flame holder. It's a solemn ceremony. We thought this sounded like a unique way to experience New Year's Eve. We left our hotel with plans to stop for dinner along the way - had what we thought was the best Japanese food we have eaten to date and were on our way. Shortly before the entrance to the prayer park we notice another entrance where all the cars were entering. We thought maybe everyone was parking here and were shuttled over to the other event. So we pay our entrance fee and walk around this park - where they had over $1.3 million Christmas lights on display and food/game vendors. Within 30 minutes we had walked through this whole section but didn't see anything going on that resembled the ceremony. We got in our car and drove the half mile or so to the prayer park where a guard told us to go back to the Illumination event that nothing was going on at the Prayer Park. With limited English (and no Japanese on our part) we didn't know what else to do. So that our hour drive wasn't for nothing, we decided to travel to Naha to see if we could find anything going on there - but we couldn't see the event we had read about for that part of town either and it had started to rain. So after 2 1/2 hours of driving we arrive back at our hotel and decide to see what is on TV. The only English speaking channel was CNN where they were doing a year in review. We snuggled up on the bed (which was too short for Jake) and sometime before the new year we both fell asleep!
New Year's morning, we went for a swim at the hotel pool and were enjoying the donuts we had picked up for breakfast. Jake is not very picky, but when he took one bite of his donut he said this tastes like chicken BBQ!! We ended up throwing that one away! We left the hotel and traveled to the Nakagusuku Castle. We walked around the castle ruins, exploring the many different sections and enjoying a great view from that part of the island. This week we also were invited, along with another couple & their children, to Jake's boss house for dinner. The next day we also went to a farewell luncheon where I was able to meet all of the officers in his command and their spouses. It was great to finally meet other spouses and families.
We hope your New Year is off to a wonderful start!
Natasha and Jake
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