Two religious holidays covered...how many more to go?

Interesting past couple of days. I was treated to traditional Japanese New Years Eve and New Years day food thanks to Fumiko. It was a cool experience but a little too fishy for my liking-literally-I was fine with the soba and omechi but I had to pass on the food was basically little dried out minnows. Just pick em up with your chopsticks and eat them! I'm not exactly an adventurous eater-I like to stick the the basic meats-but I will usually at least give it a try. However I have a rule against eating anything that still has a head. God bless her anyways for trying to expand my horizons a little! Speaking of which, the conversations we have where I try to explain why we say "Bless you" when you sneeze are quite hilarious. And that doesn't even come close to our pronunciation conversations where we try to make the "R" and "L" sound. Imagine not being able to distinguish between "bowling" and "boring"!

Today we went to the Meiji-jingu shrine. Us and three million other people. At least that's what it says on the pamphlet. And 4 million people go the the shrine in Asakusa. That's 7 million people right there-well over half the population of Tokyo! I'm sure that the church going rate of Canadians is well below 50% at Christmas time even. It's very surprising because I've never considered the Japanese to be very religious-I suppose there's more to religion than going to church.

Anyways I guess we were a little late getting there (about 2pm) because I think we were persons number three million and one and three million and two in line. The wait wasn't too bad I guess-probably less than an hour. Then we threw some cash into the shrine and said our prayers for the next year (basically bring us good health and luck and whatnot.) I couldn't help wondering what they do with all the money. Imagine if everybody threw in 50 yen (some throw more, some less.) If my math is correct then that's 150 million yen!! Quite a score.

On a completely different note, I don't usually go for Japanese music-it's strange and scary to me, as Abe Simpson would say. However on New Years Eve we watched the NHK music special (litterally four hours long) and I was able to pick out a few good songs. If you want to try some Japanese music that is actually half decent then have a look at these three songs:

Planetarium by Ai Otsuka
Smily by Ai Otsuka
Fairyland by Ayumi Hamasaki

I think all three are pretty catchy and I'm not exactly a J-pop lover! So go listen to them-you know how to get your hands on them-if you don't then you're probably not interested in it anyways.

*edit* and if you want the full experience then go download the Smily music video by Ai! It's pretty funny and she is a CUTIE!