Burning Arrows

Happy 2008 Everyone!

In Japan, the new year celebration is the big annual event and we did our best to take part although we weren't hanging out with Japanese people so we had to improvise. A few nights ago a friend introduced us to a German pub. The pub is ironically run by an American who cooks really authentic German food and serves really great beer. The beer is from a nearby microbrewery (run by the same guy) who boasts their own talented german beer engineer who attends the pub and introduces each handcarfted ale in Japanese to a nearly passed out crowd (seems that the Japanese fake beer is more their style). This pub was having a new year's eve party and since we didn't have plans, we thought we would go there for dinner and a pint before heading to a shrine to ring in the new year - literally.

Dinner was excellent and the beer of choice was a limited edition ice bock (they freeze the bock beer - bock is a strong flavoured 9% alc beer - and skim off the ice to concentrate the beer and alc.). The beer was way too tasty and at 13% it was a good thing that there were only a couple of glasses per person. The owner was short staffed for the night and we were all given glasses and told which taps had which beer and the night was "self-serve". Crazy - the guy beside us was sending his 7 year old up to the kegs to pour his beer! We got a chance to have turkey (well, Shawn did at least as he had the very last order left in the kitchen) so that was a rare treat too.


After dinner we took the subway back in search of a shinto shrine where Japanese people go to greet the new year. They do this in a couple of ways. One thing that some people do (we have learned that the "Japanese traditions" that are supposed to be very strict are actually very plastic and dependant on the region, because Hokkaido is so recently colonized, there is an interesting mix of traditions here dependant on the region of origin) is to "burn an arrow" at the shrine. The arrow was traditionally burned on the new year and replaced with a new one, a symbol of renewal. Our understanding is that some people burn other things now.

My attempts to convince Shawn to burn his slippers that he has loved nearly to complete destruction were futile. He insisted that he can't burn them until he has a replacement and given what we have seen here, we won't find size 13 slippers in Japan anytime soon. Hint hint Auntie M!! Instead, we decided to burn a rolled sheet of paper on which we wrote something about 2007 that we wanted to renew or something that we planned to do differently. On reflection, I think that it was a worthwhile excersise and may become part of our regular new years tradition. In the end, we were in the wrong area of town and didn't find the shrine, so we came back to our apartment, played auld lang syne, popped the cork on a mini champagne and burned our notes.


Another thing that is done at the shrine is the bell is rung 108 times. This is meant to sybolize the 108 earthly desires. I am curious to see the list - 108 is an interesting number. I am not sure what exactly ringing the bell is supposed to do about these desires, but it probably has something to do with getting the attention of the shinto gods. It seems that they have a busier social calendar than most gods and aren't always just sitting above the shrine waiting for a whiny human to come along and say a prayer - you have to make noise before praying to get their attention. We were really hoping to get a chance to ring the bell, but since we didn't this year, we will have to find a place to do it next year.

On the first we took a look at a map and decided to go the "easy" route and go to a temple that was big and easy to find. It seems that we weren't the only people who had this idea. Here is a photo of the crowd lined up to get into the shrine. This was basically how crowded it was right from the subway and along the 6 blocks or so it took to walk to the steps. Once inside we bought our fortune for the coming year (the last place we did this at there was an english version - this time, we had no idea what our fortune was.... I guess that can be a good thing). If your fortune is bad, you are supposed to tie it and leave it at the shrine for the monks to burn. Since we weren't sure what ours was, we thought it would be best (and more fun) to tie it and leave it. Here is Shawn tying his in a tree, and I tied mine on the rack provided.












We also purchased our arrows for next year while we were at the shrine. They were expensive, but it will be fun to burn them one year from now. There were all sorts of trinkets for sale inside the shrine and with the prices that they were going for, it seems that the shrine uses the new year as their annual fundraising event. As we left the shrine we walked past rows and rows of food vendors, hot sake carts and cotton candy. Here is a photo of one of the snack carts - grilled whole squid, steamed snails (big ones) and..... corn? Overall, it was more of a carnival atmosphere than a religious experience, but well worth the cold toes and hour of standing in the crowd to see it.

So goodbye 2007 - Hello 2008. In the coming year, I resolve to learn to speak more Japanese (I imagine that if I don't, it will be a tortuous year).