New camera!

Since my old camera broke, I bought a new camera today. It is a Canon Powershot S100. I have not had time to use it yet, but it seems like a nice camera.

Funny t-shirts

I bought some more t-shirts in Tokyo on my way home from Saitama. I already have t-shirts with pigs eating a Japanese pork dish, cows eating beef steak, and a hen eating eggs. I bought one more with the hen, since my old one is a yellow shirt and the black looks better. I also found a salmon eating salmon sushi, bears eating bear paws (a Japanese dish), and rabbits looking at a rabbit fur coat.

I also wanted to buy a t-shirt that said "aho gaijin" ("idiot foreigner") in Japanese, but they only came in the size "large as a tent". There was also a nice t-shirt that said "Starwars coffe" and had a picture of a storm trooper instead of the Starbucks woman, but again they only had tent sized shirts left.

One more bag

I have a big suitcase in leather that I use when travelling to Sweden (so I can put lots of Swedish food for my Swedish colleague in it on the way back to Japan). I also have some smaller leather bags that I use for my magic props, and for shorter trips (and one of them I use as a set with the suitcase when travelling longer periods of time too, as a carry-on bag).

I have recently bought one more bag, even smaller. It is a camera bag, though I currently have a deck of cards in it. That is about all it can fit.

Japanese New Year: Hatsumode at Meiji Jingu

Me outside the Meiji Jingu grounds.

When the new year starts, you go to the Shinto shrines for "hatsumode" ("first visit"). If you go right after midnight when the new year has just started, there is usually a huge line and you have to wait for hours (if you go to one of the larger shrines). I once went to the Hokkaido Jingu in Sapporo, but the line was kilometers long, with 30 people abreast... and it is fairly cold here in the winter nights, so I gave up.

If you manage to reach the actual shrine, you throw some money in a basket, pull a rope connected to some bells (causing noise so the Gods know to listen to you), and pray for something (like passing the entrance exam to your favorite university). You also usually buy a form of written prediction of how your new year will turn out. You get things like "very lucky" or "not so lucky", and details about love life, money, etc. If you get some bad prediction, you can tie it to a tree in the shrine to have the bad effects canceled.

There are usually also tents selling alcohol, hot dogs, and general festival food. Having this kind of commerce on the shrine or temple grounds is very common in Japan, but was a bit strange to me at first. But the religions here seem fairly relaxed, and many shrines and temples put up Christmas decorations on the Buddhas or shrines and other things like that.

My brother and his girlfriend eating crepes outside the temple. The tents in the background is for getting people to donate blood.

People ahead of me in the line to the shrine. And the line turns around the corned and goes on for much longer.

This year I went to Meiji Jingu, which is possibly the most heavily visited shrine in Japan. I went there on January 3 in the hope that most people would have already done their hatsumode by now, so the line would not be that long. Compared to peak times, it was not long, but it still would take more than an hour of standing in line, so I once again gave up. I went to a nearby store selling funny t-shirts instead. As I understand, Meiji Jingu gets more than 3 million visitors during the first three days of the year. If you go there during the summer when nothing special is going on, there are around 10 other people or so.

Magic in Saitama

I was asked to do some magic when I was in Saitama. I did one show when my brother's girlfriend's younger brother was home from work. He only had one day off, so there was a special show mainly for him (though 6 other people where also watching).

The next day he was away working, but some other people showed up and I was asked to do two magic shows, one before the main meal and one after (one guest could not show up until quite late). There were 10 people watching these shows.

The encore rabbits.

I was also asked to do the trick they liked the most again, though everyone had seen it several times by then.... Usually I would not, but they were VERY insistent on an encore, so in the end I relented and it seemed most people did still not see how it was done.

The mini-FRISK that was not even mine!

The most popular trick was using a bunch of sponge rabbits. This was pretty good since last year was the year of the rabbit (now it has become the year of the dragon) so the tie in was good. I also did a trick with some FRISK breath mints changing size and the text changing etc. Later the guest that showed up last turned out to have a tiny FRISK box strapped to her phone, which was funny.

Japanese New Year: Endless amounts of food

My brother's girlfriend made some excellent "futo maki" (sushi rolls).

I had a fairly traditional Japanese New Year this year. In Japan, New Year is a big deal, and most people have several days off from work. You celebrate the new year with your family, so this is the time of year where it is most expensive and difficult to get plane tickets, and there used to be lines of cars standing still for 80 km when everyone was going back home to gather with their relatives or when everyone was going back to the cities to work after the holidays.

Some octopus, sushi, ham, and other things.

The main activity is doing nothing, and eating. Traditionally, not even housewives where supposed to work during the New Year celebration and they had to work lots before instead, making enough food to feed the whole extended family for three days.

Toshi koshi soba

There are some foods that you are supposed to eat. On the 31st, you eat "toshi koshi soba" ("bringing in the new year soba"), which means soba noodles, with no additions (i.e. no meat etc.) but in extreme amounts. You also eat "osechi ryouri", lots of small dishes of traditional food. Most are based on some kind of word-play system, so you eat beans to have a year where you are serious in studies or work because the word for bean is "mame" but "mame" is also the word for serious. There is also a lot of other food that you eat, and you drink a lot of alcohol.

Crabs are not particularly New Year but they are very Hokkaido, where I am from, so I am usually asked to bring crabs with me.

Sukiyaki

Swedish cheese is not normally available at Japanese New Year tables, but my brother had brought some with him which was nice for me. Also, cheese slicers like the one in this picture are almost unheard of in Japan (they get pre-sliced cheese here).

New Year Holiday

I went to Saitama (near Tokyo) to visit my brother's girlfriend's parents, who live there. My brother and his girlfriend also came to Japan, so we met up in Saitama.

I ate way too much food (all of it delicious), did 3 magic shows, saw mount Fuji (you can see it from their living room), bought some weird t-shirts, and generally had a good time.

I will update the blog more when I have time, now that I am back and actually have a computer at hand. First out is just a picture of my luggage for my 4 day stay in Saitama. In the "big" bag I just about managed to fit 3 t-shirts and the same amount of underwear. The small bag is much much heavier, and is full of magic props.