Kathleen and Brad: New Years!

For New Year's we met up with Chris, his dad Greg who was visiting from Colorado, and Chris' girlfriend Aki in Shibuya. Shibuya is probably my favorite portion of Tokyo. It is home to the largest intersection in the world but it also has a very cool atmosphere. It's mostly popular with people our age and has a lot of restaurants and bars as well as claw games and a few shops (which I really want to go to but have been avoiding, especially after my purchase today...).

Anyway, Brad and I were really surprised when we got to the station in Shibuya how few people there were. Usually even when we're there late on a Sunday night it's pretty crowded... but not on New Years Eve! The reason is is that New Years is typically a family holiday in Japan. People take off of work around New Years and travel to their hometowns to visit family, celebrate the New Years, and travel to a shrine to pray for the upcoming year. To see what wikipedia has to say click here.

We started out at a restaurant where everything on the menu, including drinks was 270 yen. These restaurants are pretty popular here and mainly have appetizer type food on the menu. After eating our fair share we grabbed some drinks from the conbini (convenience store--also drinking in public is legal and common here.) and headed towards hachiko crossing (the big intersection). This is when we noticed that it was getting more crowded. The crazy thing was that a lot of the people were foreigners. (Usually Roppongi is foreigner central, but apparently there were a lot of tourists and Shibuya's more popular for New Years. I'm just guessing though...)

When we got close the Hachiko crossing it started getting louder and louder and definitely very crowded and a little rowdy. There were policemen up on top of cars and the Shibuya Guardian Angels were standing back to back waiting for something to happen. It was fun being surrounded by everyone for the New Years but it was also a little scary because you had to move with the crowd. There was no space to move around on your own at all. For all the hype that there was at the intersection, there was no Times Square-esque party and there was no countdown. So I'm not sure if it was exactly at midnight or not but we made our own little countdown after a few minutes and then moved a way a little bit. It was so much fun though! I have never celebrated anything like that in such a big crowd before!

The crossing

The Guardian Angels.

The crowd behind us.

New Years kiss!

After celebrating midnight, we headed to what we do best...karaoke!! (Well they did, I think I took a nap. :) )

Usually the trains stop around 1 or 2 in the morning but around Tokyo on New Years the trains run all night. Since Brad and I couldn't make it back up to our house (the trains do stop outside of Tokyo), we decided to head to Meiji Shrine after karaoke. It was amazing how many people were there at 4 am. It wasn't extremely busy but still more people than I was expecting. They had the the whole thing fully staffed too. There was a guard standing at attention, tons of police around, as well as gift shops, and a bunch of places where you can get your fortune for the new year.

These paper lanterns were all lit up. Very pretty!

The torii leading to the shrine. On New Years day it can take hours waiting in line to get to the shrine. I guess that's the benefit of going early--no waiting!