Here are a few pictures of a New Year's party at church last night, traditional decorations around town, and dinner at Risa's grandparents' house tonight. All of it proved to be memorable, but dinner tonight was a definite highlight of the holiday. The extended family welcomed me, showed amazing patience with my language ability, laughed with me, fed me, gave me gifts (including a cell phone charm & the stuffed "Kappa" character Ojiisan collects), surprised me with a tour of the beautiful garden by flashlight, sent me home with a bag of mikans (small oranges), and invited me back again soon.
Many Japanese people go to a shrine on New Year's day to wish or pray for the new year, usually for things like health, good exam results, or general prosperity.
Dinner with Risa & her extended family...she & I had planned on trying a new recipe at my apartment for dinner, but she called in the late afternoon & invited me instead to join her mom's side of the family for their New Year's Day dinner (the biggest and most family-centered holiday in Japan). I'd met her mother 2 weeks ago when she brought me to the clinic when I was sick, and her sister for a couple minutes that same day. But everyone else tonight was a new face! From left: Risa, me (holding my gift "Kappa"), dad, cousin, sister, uncle, grandpa, cousin-in-law, mom. They are amazingly kind & great people. Her dad often travels to Thailand for business so he understands how it feels to be the foreigner who struggles to keep up with a fast-paced group conversation. He considerately occasionally asked quietly in Japanese, "Do you understand? Now we're talking about ---." And if I hadn't caught the latest subject change or joke, he'd fill me in using simple, slow Japanese so I never felt left out or lost.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the marriage proposal I received! Four of us at dinner are single (and 3 of us are within months of the same age) so when Uncle assured us that some day a perfect mate will come along, Cousin Take-san looked at me & asked in Japanese (with quite a serious face expression), "So should we get married?"
One never knows what the year holds, haha! ;)
2 comments:
They sound like a wonderful family. I am so glad you had such nice people to spend New Years with. I am sorry that Christmas was a bit of a downer with the 'teleporter' not working. I love you. Happy New Year!! Emily
P.S. What was your answer?? ;)
I'm so glad you had such a wonderful and memorable New Year's (complete with a marriage proposal??) this year. I did too, in Nagoya with a friend of mine from college who was back in Japan visiting her family for the holidays. We stayed up til midnight and ate soba (I thought of you!!!) Then her mom made yummy o-sechi ryouri the next morning, and we went to the shrine and watched the ekiden on tv. It's been a whole year since we drank fermented rice porridge and ate mikans with a hundred other Japanese people and rang that big bell at midnight! Happy New Year 2008!!
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