New Year Already?

I can't believe it's already a new year. Where did the time go? It's really crazy. But anyway, Happy New Year!

This year, I spent New Year's with the band again. They start playing much later, this year was around 11 PM. There is a special New Year's song and a countdown with a toast. Then more playing. It was pretty cold, close to freezing, so we wore lots of layers. I had a grand total of seven shirts and 3 pants! I was pretty warm actually.

Two of the new girls also came this year. This is their first New Year's in Japan. We had a really great time. We get along pretty well. I think they were really happy to be there. They got along with the group really well.

This is a picture of the first sunrise of the new year. I didn't take a picture of the actual sun rise, but here it is reflecting off of some buildings. The pictures are much nicer when I take them during the day! LOL.

Here are two of the girls. This is after the all nighter. The band plays until around 3:30 and around 4 or so, we all walked to a large shrine. It's tradition for Japanese people to go to a shrine and pray on New Years. The other two missionaries and I of course didn't pray in the shrine. But it's good to watch at least once so we can know what happens. There are also food stands set up there. It's like a carnival. So we ate some fun Japanese food too.

Then we walked back to the station. The girls said good bye there and went home. They had to ride the train for over and hour to get back to their house. They had been with me since Sunday Morning when they went to church with me. After church, we had lunch and then we took naps until 8:00. So they were pretty tired by the end of it all.

I stayed with the band a bit longer. We watched the sun rise and then went to a field and played around. We tossed a Frisbee until it broke, some people played badmition and a couple of people tried unsuccessfully to fly a kite. Then we played some make-shift football. We finished at close to 10 AM. After that, I grabbed some breakfast at McDonalds with two of the people. We ended up talking (in Japanese!) for 2 hours! Then I walked home. I didn't get home until 1pm!!! Crazy! By that time I had a terrible headache and very sore feet. I slept until 7Pm. still woke up with the headache, so I broke down and took some advil. I feel so much better now!

All in all, it was a very good day.

In other news, I updated blogger, and now I can't post my pictures directly from Picassa anymore. It's slightly annoying. Hopefully the problem with be fixed soon. But the good news is that I now have a Picassa Webs Album account. This means I can put up lots of pictures for your viewing pleasure. I will eventually get around to putting up a link for you.

Anyway, that's what happened today. Hopefully I will get around to doing some past updates.