The REAL Japanese Holiday

As I said before, Christmas is just sorta so-so here. No one cares all that much. But New Year's? Japan is HUGE on New Year's. Not like Christmas, meaning all the stores have special sales and people watch Christmas movies and everyone essentially goes crazy (full of holiday spirit!). It's sorta hard to explain, but I guess in simple terms it means it's not very commercialized. People do special things and there are special events, but there's not a lot of New Year's paraphernalia and songs and movies and stuff. I personally don't think either way is better than the other, but I know a lot of people feel angry that Christmas has been so commercialized. Honestly I just think that's American culture, and I still love Christmas even though it's commercialized. Moving on-

So for oshougatsu (New Year's), I went to Osaka with a Rotarian, his wife, and three of his grandchildren. There were 2 girls (5 and 11) and one boy (9). I was really excited because I hadn't been to Osaka before, and that's sort of ridiculous considering I'm only an hour away from it and it's one of the largest cities in Japan (2nd to Tokyo, I think). Essentially, I haven't been in a big, modern city in 4 months (technically you could count Hiroshima, but all we really saw of the city was the area around the atom bomb dome. So I don't count it). It freaked me out a bit. The train station we stopped at wasn't even the biggest in Osaka (Shin-Osaka; still pretty big, though), and I was still a little shocked by the size. When we walked outside, there were a whole bunch of huge buildings, and I felt like the world was going to cave in. An airplane flew overhead and I actually stopped to watch it, because I don't think I've seen a plane since August. Osaka is huge, and I was a bit freaked out. The roads were too wide, the buildings too big, lots of things. And I wasn't even in the main part of the city! It's weird how you just get used to things like crowding and small spaces and trains/bikes as opposed to cars.

After we left the train station, we went to the ryokan. It was very nice, although personally I liked the one I stayed in with my first host family better because it had a view. This one was pretty standard in terms of the room (tatami mats, tea ready when we got there, etc), but the onsen was very nice. I went to the outside portion because it was just above freezing that night, and nothing feels better that going into a hot spring when it's freezing outside. Onsen are especially popular when it snows. The ryokan's onsen was also very, very pretty, but I couldn't take a picture for obvious reasons. Sorry :( The food was also very good- all of it was traditional oshougatsu food- and so on and so forth. But the main part of the trip was when we went to Universal Studios Japan on New Year's Day.

USJ was pretty fun. A lot of the rides were, you know, kiddie rides that I would have loved to ride with my friends, but being with actual kids wasn't as fun. They were an indecisive bunch- first they wanted to ride the Snoopy roller coaster, but when we walked ALL THE WAY there they changed their minds, and I think we spent about half the time freezing outside trying to figure out what to do next. There was one huge roller coaster that I was dying to ride, but they got freaked out by it and I had to go alone. Luckily, going solo meant I got to skip the hour-long wait and go right to the front. That was nice ^-^ So even though I really wished I had a friend or two with me there, it was still fun. And Tim, I was about to buy you some Spiderman earmuffs, but then I realized I had no money. Sorry. I know you would have worn them everywhere.

The next day (today, actually), we went to a shrine where we wrote our wishes for the new year and hung them up for the gods to see. I had to write it in kanji, and I don't know how many times my character for "spring" got yanked away and replaced with a fresh sheet of paper. I think I actually killed a whole tree D: But I did get it, eventually! And then I ate takoyaki and went back to Kusatsu. It feels so good to be back. Really, I didn't like Osaka that much, although I might like the bigger city part that I didn't get to see. I much prefer Kyoto. And Kusatsu. I honestly don't think I could've gotten a better location in Japan- I love being next to Lake Biwa, I love being next to Kyoto, I love Kusatsu and Otsu. Kat, my Rotary Club's first exchanger who came to visit a while ago, agreed- the school may not be perfect, you may not know the language, at times everything can just suck, but it's got to be one of the best places in Japan.

That was my New Year's. The rest of break I'll be alternating between shopping and sleeping, and on the 7th I go back to school. And then some more stuff will happen, I'm sure ^-^

On a side note- I remember thinking at the beginning of 2009, "I'm going to Japan this year... Wow O.O" Now I'm thinking, "I'm going back to America this year. Whoa." It feels weird, thinking about that. Hard to explain. I can't wait for the end of my exchange because I know by the end I'll have accomplished so, so much, but at the same time I really don't want it to end so soon. It's hard to explain!!! The dilemmas of being an exchanger are complex O.o

Well, then-

Jaa, ne!