akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

Happy New Year!

Headed to Kyoto to visit a friend of a friend on new years day. The city centre was heaving so we picked up some omiyage and headed for the bus to take us north. We arrived just before dinner and the house could have been in any country - the 3 generations watching holiday TV almost oblivious to each other - the younger ones sending emails on their cell phone/sleeping under the heated coffee table and a slightly bewildered looking granny wondering where I fitted into the family celebrations. I was kind of thinking the same. It was very nice to have been invited to the new years dinner and the fussing mother, playing her role perfectly, had prepared far too much.

We sat at a high table seperate from the main family and talked over nabe - my friend catching up with her old college mate. I had to go through the whole allergy situation and explain, just to be clear, that I'll eat anything that won't kill me or have me itching for a week. In these close situations I always feel overwhelmingly foriegn - "sorry, I can't eat fish". I could already predict the conversation topic after I was to leave the house.

After dinner we watched home movies of some pretty serious off piste snow action, along with some terrifying rafting. During the snowboarding, my new aquaintance pointed out all the friends who avalanches had gotten the better of. I counted at least three. This was full on sport - the kind most people never engage in. The father came home, looking slightly pished, and got the left overs - occaisionally hailing the mother with an "OI", which brought all other converstaion to a temporary halt. Yep, this was a typical Japanese house alright.

We headed to babysit another friends house up near Ginkakuji, to tend to the tropical fish, see the cat was not too stressed out and generally rummage around a strangers house, as you do when you get the opportunity. There was something very welcoming about the house - it was very western but also very Japanese. The architecture was Japanese - with a long walkway joining rooms and garden to the other side - but the rooms were filled with surf boards, apple computers, western music and cameras. It was a freelance photographers house who had a young family. I'll perhaps never meet them but having been shown their photo album and having seen their home I can imagine how welcoming and genuiune they would be. unpretentious and unprecious.

Despite it being almost freezing in Kyoto that night, we slept with the window open to allow the cat entry. I couldn't quite believe it but kept the 5 layers over me like I was back at my grannys farm as a kid. the bastard never even came in.

We had a feast for breakfast where we were as equally fussed over as we had been the previous night, saw a few shrines, got our fortune and then headed back to Sanjo and eventually Osaka for osechi.

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