Happy New Year!

This year we celebrated New Years with two of our favorite people here in Himeji. Andre and Emily came up to our apartment and we watched a Japanese singing competition, ate dinner and played Bananagrams. For those of you who have never played Bananagrams, you are totally missing out. Its much like scrabble, minus the game board. Each player gets their own individual letter tiles and you have to make up your own Scrabble type word set-up. After you use all of your tiles to make words you say "peel" and everyone has to grab another letter from the middle until all of the tiles are gone and one person has used all of their tiles. After playing for over an hour we decided to watch the end of the singing competition and then count down to midnight. It was pretty strange counting down without the help of Dick Clark and the big ball in New York but it worked none the less. It was also strange thinking that as the clock hit midnight it was only 8:00 back home in Az. But after a quick smooch from Audrey we cleaned everything up and got ready for bed because we had to get up early on New Years Day to go to an onsen with Andre's host family. Andre was lucky enough to come to Himeji 10 years ago as a youth ambassador through the Phoenix Sister Cities. After his 3 week home stay he has built a wonderful relationship with an amazing Japanese family that live about 20 minutes from us. Audrey and I were so excited to meet them and what better way to start the new year than a couple hours of public bathing! The next morning we took a train four stops down the line, where Andre's host dad was waiting for us. He took us to their home where they had a traditional Japanese New Years breakfast waiting for us. We had things like black beans which symbolized hard work for the new year, bamboo shoots that symbolized growing strait and strong, lotus root that symbolized looking into the future and little dried fish which I'm not sure symbolized anything. They were probably the hardest for me to eat because they stare at you as you are trying to put them in your mouth. After breakfast we found out that our plans had changed. We were not going to an onsen right away, instead we were going to a couple of shrines. So we loaded up two cars and headed to the first shrine. After Andre's host parents did their thing at the shrine we loaded up and headed to another shrine... and then another! I guess they can get a stamp at each shrine they visit and when they get 7 stamps they get a prize. Mr. Ayukawa later told me that they call this a "stamp rally". Luckily for us our "rally" ended with three and we headed back home for lunch. We had an incredible assortment of wonderful Japanese food and really enjoyed our time with Andre's host family. His host sister, her husband and 2 little girls also accompanied us on the stamp rally and then for lunch. The little girls were so cute and Audrey and I had a blast playing with them. After lunch and play time we were finally on our way to the onsen. It was up in the mountains and very old and rustic, but the baths were amazing. This onsen experience was a little different than Audrey and I are used to. Most of the time we dont have anyone to talk to because we are split up. It also seems like any bath that I get into clears out pretty fast. Im not sure if I smell or if Japanese people just dont like sharing their baths with me. That being said, it was nice to have Andre and Emily with us so we each had someone to talk to as we relaxed. After an hour and a half of good company and relaxation we headed back to the train station. It was a wonderful day with wonderful people. We cherish these new relationships we have been building here in Japan and look forward to them continuing to grow!