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| Happy 2004! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Welcoming the Year of the Monkey! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| New Year's Eve! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yasaka Shrine in Gion, Kyoto. This is the main shrine in the area, and the world-famous Gion Festival starts and ends here. We heard it would be happening, so we checked it out. It was SOOOO crowded, it was crazy. Can you see all the people? But it was an experience! (: We ate lots of tasty festival foods, too. Yum! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| New Year's Day! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The next day, we had some shrine-hopping to finish up. We went to Heian-jingu, another very famous shrine in Japan. Mostly because of this HUGE steel toori gate at the entrance. Well, shrine-visiting is part of the Japanese New Year celebrations (to pray and ring the bells/gongs there), so naturally this one was PACKED too. But we were also able to get lots more tasty festival food! (: Woo hoo! The second picture is inside the shrine grounds, where you can see all the people we were competing for space with! Can you see any kimono? You should be able to! Many women (and a few men) wear kimono for New Years. Jeremy and I invented a new game on New Year's Eve. Know the "Slug Bug" game? Well, every time we saw a kimono, we socked each other in the shoulder. (: |
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| SNORT!! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| When is it the year of the Bison?? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||