I was dead tired yesterday, having spent the day shopping in a nearby cheap electronics district. I went to bed around 9PM and today I woke up with one sole concern: How will I withdraw Yen in Japan? To make a long story short, I forgot to put a PIN on my Visa card, so I cannot withdraw from ATMS! This is a pretty important concern and I got some friends back in Canada to call my bank for me (it was simpler that way) and I may be able to put a PIN number on my card from here, but not before January 4th since everything is closed for New Years. Yesterday one of my friends in Japan lent me some money so I could survive until my issue is resolved, but I felt really bad. Luckily (after many efforts) I found a local post office by studying maps on the Japan Postal services website, getting to the general area and asking for directions once here. Finding a place in Japan is complicated, even for Japanese! Often there are no addresses on the doors and if there are, they are not in numerical order, but in temporal order (numbers given by date of construction)... To complicate matters further, most streets are not named in Japan! When I found the post office, I was surprised to see that it was a small space with a machine inside. That machine is an international ATM that enable me to withdraw the funds necessary to repay my friend. Afterward I found out that before the new year, Japanese like to clear the slate and start anew, with no outstanding obligations. So I was able to follow this Japanese tradition. Around 4pm I joined my friend to celebrate new years with his family. It started with a grand home-made dinner at his place while we were watching special end-of-year TV shows. The most popular show forcasted Japanese and foreign singers that sang all types of music. Some performances were especially corny and I was humored by the amount of English that is used in the lyrics. (Why don't they sing the whole song in English, one might have asked... Around 10:30 PM we left for the Shitennouji temple, one of the biggest in Osaka where thousands of others also gathered to spend the last moments of the ending year, and the first moments of 2007. There were many religious rites such as staring at a statue of Buddha and thinking of a wish for the upcoming year, and then lifting the statue. Beliefs say that if the statue is light, your wishes will come true easily and if the statue is heavy, it will be harder to accomplish your wish. I tried it and the statue was very light. I don't understand how it could be heavy for some people, but apparently it is heavy for some... Then there was another Buddha statue that you could rub any part and rub the same part on your body for good health! The highlight of the night is when families get to ring the temple bells. There was a loooong line up for that.. they ring the bells all night, for a total of 180 chimes. We had ticket number 15 so we were able to be one of the first to ring the bell. It is very exciting to hear the bells start to ring. Of course just before midnight there was a countdown and everyone cheered at the start of the new year. I was very happy to experience this very traditional Japanese event.
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