My favorite word of the new year is "katzenjammer." Go google it. I wondered why everyone wanted to meet up on Sunday instead of Saturday. Turns out Monday is a national holiday, 成人の日 Seijin no Hi. Coming of Age Day is basically the day when all the new twenty-year-olds celebrate their passage into adulthood. I missed most of the day being a little hungover; that's what happens when you start drinking at 4 PM.
Shinnenkai's are just parties celebrating the new year, and my first was at the residence of a guest lecturer for a class I wasn't in, Mori-san. Steve and Dominique, who are both in said class, accompanied me to Mori-san's four story residence in Aoyama-Itchome.
Pretty amazing house; it's located next to the Canadian Embassy and sure enough I met the Canadian ambassador that day... We talked about Obama. I met Mori-san's son and a lot of other people I don't totally remember. About half of the people there were students and the other half were acquaintances of the host. One of those acquaintances was Japan's representative to Miss Universe 2006.
She made yakisoba with this guy on the right...forgot his name. Oh come on, it's not like I remember Miss Japan's name either. Yeah I met a whole lot of random people and practically drank an entire bottle of wine. Dominique busted out the mad skills of the 5th ranked Yoyo-er in Europe:
6:30 rolled around and I had to bail to catch dinner in Shin-Okubo. Of course by then I had already eaten my fill. I didn't end up eating much at that dinner, but I have to say the kanton we went to this time was pretty disappointing. They didn't even give us any lettuce! I did ask for them to make us some fried rice.
There's nothing like bacon fat fried rice that you don't totally remember eating. It was my first time meeting a previous Tokyo visiter, Zach, and his buddies from Temple. Diana and Gordon had just come back from Hakone and busted out their gift initiating the omiyage duel.
It's manjyuus from Nanohara! Don't tell them I took half that box. I ended up having the most eclectic collection of alcohol that night. During the first party, some Japanese guy asked me what people in America drink to start the night, beer or wine. I told him people just usually end up drinking one thing, but then I totally ended up doing the opposite of that. Wine, makkoli, soju, beer, tequila (three of us took a random shot in a store just to use the restroom...terrible idea), and then nihonshu. Tasted the rainbow.
I didn't feel completely miserable the next day, but I didn't feel great either. We ended up doing nothing other than drinking this Pepsi.
Well I drank the Pepsi. Pepsi Mont Blanc tastes like Pepsi with a shot of coffee. I enjoyed it immensely, a remarkably pleasant surprise. V disagreed. We did go out for dinner, but we didn't get to see anybody in kimonos. Instead everyone had already changed into casual wear to go out drinking. My understanding of Seijin no Hi is that you wake up god awfully early, put on your suit or kimono, go to the temple, hang out with your family, and then drink at night with your friends. That last part is very familiar.
The 11th rolled around and it was time for us to break our Kagami-mochi, an event called Kagami-biraki. Unfortunately, I think we did the whole Kagami-mochi thing a little wrong and never took it out of its plastic container. I did some research and found out that the mochi should dry out completely and become brittle so that you can shatter it; however, ours was still moist and hard as a rock. We decided to wait it out, and after a couple of hours it turned into this:
From all the pictures on the internet, no one else had a mochi that turned out like this... At this point, I started to tear it apart. You can't cut it with a knife, since it represents your family and doing so would be cutting ties. So I tore it apart with my bear hands until my fingernails bled.
I'm totally serious about the fingernails. They hurt so much right now. I opened up a mikan and the stress on my fingernails reignited the pain. To top it off, some of the juice got under my fingernails, and the acid started to burn me from the inside out. Melodramatic? Absolutely not, it friggin hurts. But I sacrifice my body for the sake of my family.
V had some of her homemade zenzai left over and our mochi then turned into this:
Now, we have all this mochi left over. Someone please tell us if we need to eat all of it as part of Kagami-biraki. Can we just eat some of it and throw the rest away? We need to know.
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