"Hoppy" New Year

While Keizo was at work cleaning his clubhouse with his teammates on December 31st, I was sitting at the kitchen table grumpily making a list of all things I thought we needed to do to get the apartment sparkling clean for the new year and starting on the giant pile of laundry that had accumulated. New Year's in Japan means a clean start, literally scrubbing your house from top to bottom, especially those places that get overlooked during regular clean sweeps (i.e. the inside of the microwave, drains and behind the washing machine)

There's really no need to go into all the details here on a food blog, so I will just say it took about 8 hours to clean the apartment, during which my mood went from grumpy to overwhelmed to angry about the gunk that wouldn't come out of the microwave to exhausted. We wrapped up the cleaning about 7 PM; Keizo took a bunch of damp laundry to the laundromat to dry and a I had a much needed hot shower and got ready to go out for dinner.

We headed to a local izakaya that Keizo knew about and enjoyed lots of small dishes with our celebratory drinks over the next two hours. Some of the highlights included the octopus carpaccio and grilled shitake below. In addition to some excellent food, this place had the most amazing ceramic dishes. They are lucky I was only carrying a small purse and none of them ended up back in our kitchen.

Sufficiently stuffed, we thought we were ready to make the 15 minute walk to Miyajidake Shrine for New Year's prayer and fortune telling. Little did we know that it had started snowing, and the wind had picked up while we were inside enjoying our meal. But that wasn't going to stop us, so we walked along the long line of cars waiting their turn to park the shrine. Walking definitely got us there faster, but the people in their cars looked a lot more comfortable.

We stood in the mob of people waiting to throw their coins and pray, got our paper fortunes and tried our luck at the raffle table. We both ended up with consolation prizes; a box of animal crackers for me and a bag full of sweet bread for Keizo and the shrine got 2000 yen richer.

Loot in hand we turned around to head home, but not before stopping for some tea and manju to fortify us for the trek. So here it is, the first food of 2011, the year of the rabbit!