happy new year
Back in Kitakyushu on Christmas day, I met Tamara and Karen at Ikki for a delicious Takoyaki dinner with very light and fluffy sponge ‘christmas cake’.
Weather turned very cold, hailing and snowing. On New Years Eve, Takako, Karen, Tama-chan and I made a delicious nabe dinner. Quiet in the studios with the snow falling outside.
around 12 we braved the cold and walked to two temples and a shrine to bring in the new year. The first temple we were afraid was a strange, gas loving new religion but just turned out to be an old temple built in a very western style - with a lot of gold leaf. We got to strike the gong, one go for each of us. Tak was trying to find a temple where they make longevity soba at 12, and so asked for noodles - a very dismayed but gracious lady gave us a mountainous bag of chips!
Onto the actual noodle temple, further up the hill, a party atmosphere with more gongs, fairy lights and a long line of people serving delious free soba. Here we are in the line.
The shrine was all outdoors and cold, but beautiful with many fortunes and prayers to buy. Tak went into interpreter overdrive to translate all of our fortunes - my year will be like a branch of blossom slowly opening up, by the way. Takachan looked after us so well, and made my Japanese New year beautiful. She even made us special lucky breakfast the next day.
