A week after New Year

Gee.... It's already the second week of January! I feel as if I have so much to talk about. In fact, I just got back from a great Ski Trip, but let me recall my stories choronically.

Dec 31: A year-end dinner party at Che's house

I actually was trying to concentrate on correcting my paper after receiving some comments from my prof. But well, it was the New Year's Eve. I couldn't simply just stay home and work through the New Year, so I took a break and joined some Kyoto crew for dinner party. pNha cooked a whole lot that day! P'Kake and P'Nui+ also prepared some dishes. So yummy ka!! We ate til we dropped! While eating, we also watched NHK special New Year Concert that gathered singers with famous songs on the hit lists throughout the year. Someone said it's a tradition and maybe nearly all households in Japan watched NHK at that time! The programs celebrating the countdown was also funny. We were so into it!! We countdowned with the TV program.

New Year's Eve's Fiesta!

p'Nha, our main chef for today

Poor jolly bear. how can you have 3 colors in one?!?!

N'Hope, the Jolly Bear Killer! (with N'Tob~)

Jan 1: A visit to Shimogamo Shrine

Not so long after the New Year's come, pNha, pChoi, pTaew~ and I went together to Shimogamo Shrine. It was the first time for me to go to a shrine at this time of the day (actually, night). We reached the shrined a bit before 1 a.m. and stayed for probably an hour or so. It's a tradition for Japanese to go to shrines to pray for New Year. It was really COLD, but there were still absolutely a lot of people there when we went.

pTaew, Mai, pNha in front of Shimogamo Shrine

I don't know why arrows, but they're supposed to bring you good luck for the year.

People bought arrows and brought them for some kind of religious ceremony.

Then, I prayed at my birthyear corner

On the way in-out the shrine, there were a lot of street food stalls. This one caught our attention b/c of the hi-tech TV screen!

Jan 1: Dinner at my place

After resting for the day, we had Hot Pot party (nabe) at my place: pTon, Pear, n'Dao, p'Nha, Nott and n'Bow (who came all the way from Osaka -- ใจง่ายจริงๆน้อง..haha). We didn't really do anything that promising except to just eat, eat and eat. Oh.. and a little live karaoke session with mostly the Thai Oldies! haha. N'Bow spent a night at my place, but I was working pretty much the whole night. So sorry na ja~~.

Jan 2: Shopping Spree

As a result of staying up late, we didn't start our day til prolly around noon. n'Bow and I cooked and ate Moo+ Satay before we left to town to join some others for shopping Spree.

our Moo+ Satay lunch

It's also a tradition here in Japan that pretty much EVERY stores put stuff on sales for New Year's bargains with special 'Fukubukuro' or the Happy / Lucky shopping bag. Usually, you have to risk your luck picking the bag cuz you don't really know what's inside. The only thing you can be sure is that the money spent is super worth the price of mechandizes put in the bag (though you wouldn't know if those stuff you'll get to use or not.) I never thought I would be spending that much for a shopping bag I don't know what is inside. But guess what? i ended up buying one anyways. It was a really good deal cuz pNha, nBow and I decided to split 'Beneton's fukubukuro' which cost us 10,500 yen in total. We calculated the price of stuff inside and OMG! it's worth nearly 60,000 yen (for 7 items)!!! Super good deal. But it was not really a good decision, cuz when you started, you hardly could stop!! Some stores actually displayed items in the bag so clearly. I had so much difficulty putting my temptation on a brake! haha (^^) But well, I manage not to get anything else afterall. =)

Jan 4: Running like a rat

I asked a friend to give me a wake-up call this morning at 10 a.m. (yes.. I needed one even that late in the morning... hur hur.) But I ended up not needing one cuz I was already woken up by a postman who was trying to deliver a package earlier that day. I went to school rather early that day to get some works done. It took so much longer than I thought to get everything finished. I submitted the final paper to my professor and rushed home to get ready to leave for a ski trip! (<-- yeah.. my first trip for the year!) More to come later on that. Now I'm so sleepy~~~. Maybe my internal clock is adjusted back to the regular people's times! Thank goodness! ;-)