Seishuun Juu Hachi Kippu

The day after Disneyland we made our way into the sprawl of Tokyo to visit my host family. We spent the whole day chatting with them. They were pretty shocked at how well Russell spoke Japanese now (especially considering the last time they saw him he spoke exactly zero Japanese). When I say "we" chatted all day, I mean mostly just Russell chatted all day. He was a champ. He covered topics from history to politics to artificial intelligence, no problem. He was REALLY tired by the end of it. Well done, Russell.

The next day was New Years Eve. We had done some investigating on the Seishuun Juu Hachi Kippu (Youth 18 Ticket) that my colleague had told us about. This is a special rail pass that is available to people in Japan only during long holidays. It is designed to allow young people (who probably don't have much money) a way to travel around Japan and gain more of an appreciation for their own country. As far as we can tell, though, the tickets are available to anyone during holiday times, so anyone can choose to buy them. The good part is that you pay $120 for 5 people day tickets. That means either one person can travel 5 full days as much as they want, or 5 people can travel one day as much as they want, or anything in between. Considering it cost us $120 for one person to take the bullet train from Kobe to Tokyo, that seemed like a pretty excellent deal. The downside is that you can only take normal trains - none of the faster variety bullet trains or even rapid trains on the regular train routes. You are stuck with local trains and express trains. Being cheap, however, that was just fine with us. We bought our ticket and jumped on the Tokkaido train line which would eventually get us to the Kansai region of Japan (where Kobe is). Sometimes we were lucky and were able to sit, other times we were no so lucky and spent a good hour or two standing. It was good that we had that day after Disneyland of mostly sitting with my host family.

Since we had 5 tickets and a whole lot of Japan to explore between Tokyo and Kobe, we decided to stop half way and divide the trip in two. Russell booked a hotel in Nagoya for New Years Eve. Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan and home to Toyota and Honda (and possibly Nissan?). Apparently Nagoya was heavily bombed during World War II, which eventually led to the city recreating itself in a more modern, western style. There are big, wide roads and plenty of urban scenery and many if Japan's largest companies.

Our first surprise when we arrived in the city was that it was snowing! We hadn't seen any snow at all in Japan yet (and don't have too much hope of seeing a lot in Kobe). It was fun to see some white to celebrate New Years. While the snow was just starting to speckle down (no sticking) I made sure to take a picture to prove it actually happened.

We arrived at night (and on a national holiday) so none of the tourist attractions were open, but we did attempt to find the nightlife in the city for New Years.

Tried to.

While our hotel happened to be situated in one of the purported nightlife centers of Nagoya, it was absolutely dead when we went out to celebrate. I was suspecting that this might be the case (though I half anticipated a few hard-core partiers to still be out. It turns out that New Years in Japan is a family holiday. Everyone is traveling before the holiday to get home to their families (much like Christmas or Thanksgiving in the U.S.) From what I gather, it is typical to have a family hot pot for dinner and watch the national broadcast New Years special on TV. The whole binge drinking thing - while certainly present in Japan, seems to be put on hold for that one night when so many other countries take to the streets to get sloshed. Go figure.

I have to admit, though, a hotpot and TV special is more appealing to me.

I guess its not so far from what Russell and I actually ended up doing. There were a few restaurants open (a very few) so we chose a yakiniku place (grilled meat) and headed in. There was a group of guys out celebrating a friend's birthday and us. The waiters were very attentive. The marinated meat we grilled up was the best I have yet had. It was amazingly good. There were a number of unidentifiable meats eaten that night, but they were so good we didn't bother to find out what they were. We left with very full bellies and very big smiles.

The next stop was the convenience store (luckily those are 24 hours year round) where we stocked up on snacks for the long night ahead and some mini bottles of whiskey. We then went back to our hotel at about 9pm.

On with the public broadcast New Years special! We spent the evening curled up on our hotel bed watching female singers compete with male singers while hosted by famous TV and movie personalities. Even Abe Hiroshi (Russell) was there. We ate snacks, drank whiskey and generally had a good time. I would, in fact, rank it among some of my favorite New Year's Eves ever.