Happy New Year!

It's a bit late, but Happy New Year!

On New Year's Eve we went to Zojoji Temple.

Zojoji Temple is right next to the famous Tokyo Tower. It was so close we felt like we could touch it! My goodness it was so crowded, but even more surprising was the amount of foreigners there. There were food vendors all over the place together with really long lines. We went inside the temple as you can see in the picture above first.

Inside was a gorgeous gold Buddhist display along with a long offering box in front of it. Many people were throwing coins in and praying.

Outside and around the back of the temple, I managed to snap a picture of myself in front of Tokyo Tower.

Back behind the temple we found some pretty interesting things. The sign above includes a poem about cherry blossoms.

In a second temple they had another similar display along with souvenirs to be bought.

Why did we choose Zojoji Temple? To see them release 3,000 balloons at midnight! Unfortunately we didn't notice the line soon enough, so we couldn't get a chance to get one of the balloons to release. I suppose that's not such a bad thing though, considering by the time we were done exploring the temple grounds we decided we were both tired and had headaches and it would be better to went home early since we still had at least three hours before midnight. We stopped by Gusto for dinner since we were starving and dying to eat something warm. I got 'chicken Cesar salad' and different kinds of hot dogs and sausages.

At home we ended up watching this enka and singing competition on TV. The New Year programs weren't quite like the ones we're used to in America. No ball dropping, no fireworks, no seeing what other people were doing around the world. Then again, we were one of the first places to welcome the new year. It was a bit disappointing. We were hoping they would show the balloon display on TV, but they didn't have that either.

Now I'm already back at school, which started back up on Thursday (the 6th). Just a month left to go before the fall semester finishes! Can't wait for spring vacation to start.