Lunar New Year festivities in Yokohama Chinatown still continue one week after New Year’s Day. This time was interesting parade.
Video: parade
Image: dances on the stage were performed earlier during the day
Earlier I wrote about lion dances, which happened one week before parade event.
This time to the year Yokohama Chinatown is full with people that it is even difficult to move around. Everybody comes to visit temples, see lion dances and to enjoy meals.
Here I added two videos with lion dances on the first day of Chinese New Year - 26th January, 2009. Dances were performed by local school children and adults. In the red envelope is some money for lion as reward. I guess how much money is there inside depends from shop to shop - the bigger shop the bigger is amount they put in envelope.
Video: lion visits shops
Image: Chinatown gate
This is New Year’s Eve of 2009 in Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine in Kamakura town. Pretty cool event. I liked idea with television screen and everything - can enjoy watching some videos and advertisements before going into shrine and making this year’s wish. Comparing with last year in Kawasaki, waiting time at this shrine was very fast - partially because of good time we arrived. Crowds usually come before New Year and later - after people met New Year at home.
Video: midnight and morning
I was browsing food stalls with hopes to find lovely New Year’s Cinderella serving fried chickens, but nobody was into chicken business at this place. Only takoyaki, takoyaki which is not my field.
Celebrating togather with friends from Thailand - they can’t take too much cold outside. Later on, we slept on chairs in some café and went to watch sunrise at the beach. Sunrise was really fast and I could not capture first moments - when I got out camera, sun was already 30% out from mountains. On the other side was good sight on Fuji in the snow.
I thought my friends become small ice cubes in this cold, but to my surprise they were very genki after seeing sunrise.
Image: sun is about to come
Image: Konnichi wa!
It was cold, but New Year is New Year and it’s always cold this time.
Happy New Year and Happy Every Day!
In the video, you can see fireworks at Minatomirai area of Yokohama. They were short, but nice. After enjoying fireworks, moved to temple in Kawasaki city as most people would visit temple during new years night.
In temple was too dark to film and we had to wait more than hour to get in, during peak time - 2AM-3AM. There was really many people. Police took care of controlling crowd. People were allowed to approach temple after previous people have left. It was well organized, I must say. After coming out of temple, there are many shops open during new years night. Special food is sticky rice cake - mochi. We tried some spicy chicken. New thing this year - two booths were selling Turkish kebabs.
Image: people shop for typical new year food and other snacks
Image: chicken was popular during new years night
Temple on Google map, daytime:
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Most people will visit temple after New Year. First when entering temple, hands are washed, people line up for their turn. Some money is thrown in box. Before prayer some sounds is given - like ringing the bell or clapping hands. After making wish some slight bend.
At the end of video I added other ceremony, but I am not sure what is that and what is being performed.
Kamakura is perfect getaway from buzzes of Tokyo. During night all temples turn slightly different.
Image: Evening in Kamakura
Image: temples in Kamakura are magical
This Kamakura shrine in Google map. Drag with mouse to see around or click on "-" to zoom out.
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