Happy New Year everyone!

This holiday season was my first away from family, but it proved enjoyable. I was able to talk to almost all my family back home, and even got my stocking from home. I found a couple of good friends who were also staying in Sendai for the break, and that’s with whom I celebrated Christmas and New Years.

For Christmas, Collin (a friend from University of Wyoming) and I went downtown and saw all the lights and got dinner. We started off by going to one of at least a few of Sendai’s Irish pubs. Well, I suppose they’re only Irish in the sense that they’re run by Japanese. Japanese who have made it Ireland-themed. They even serve both kinds of beer - Guinness and stout. Then we found a nice little hole in the wall at which to try 牛たん (cow’s tongue), for which this region is apparently famous.

The time between Christmas and New Years has been spent trying to get back into a more normal sleeping arrangement. Instead of waking up at 5 PM, I tried to switch over to waking up around 7 AM, but to no avail. My chance actually came with New Years.

For New Years I bought a bottle of Champagne and Collin, Zhou Peng (from University of Beijing) and I cooked dinner and then waited for the new year on the roof listening to the Shinto shrines ringing their bells. (Every new year, all the Shinto shrines ring the bells 108 times. I’ve heard it’s to get rid of 108 bad spirits, but I have not verified this in any way.) Since Japan is all in the same time zone, all of the Shrines across Japan are relatively synchronized, and in a city like Sendai with so many shrines, it was really a wonderful sound.

Collin and I agreed to meet up again around 6:20 to see the sunrise at a nearby shrine that sits on top of a hill. We took a time lapse of the sunrise, which didn’t turn out super-great, but it’s still nice to have.

<div style=”text-align:center;width:194px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:83%”><div style=”height:194px;background:url(http://picasaweb.google.com/f/img/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left”></div><div style=”color:#4D4D4D;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;”>Sunrise 1/1/07</div><div style=”color:#808080”></div></div> </embed>