loa_log

Happy New Year!

It’s almost the end of the first day of 2025, and I thought I’d just do a little journal entry today.

New Year’s Eve

I wanted to end 2024 feeling good, so I “took the day off” and drove off on my own since my dad seemed to be doing ok in the morning. First stop, I wanted to get in some last-minute exercise. I would usually go to a sports center that’s run by the town, but they were already on New Years break, so I headed to a park nearby to stretch and run around a little bit.

After I got a little sweaty, I drove to my favorite restaurant of 2024, Joyfull. I love going to chain family restaurants at weird times and feel like I have the whole place to myself. Even on New Years Eve, when I first got there around 1:00pm all the tables were full, but an hour later there were less than five tables left. I spent around 3 hours there to eat and organize pictures from the past year.

Before heading home, I stopped by a few shops to pick up a couple things for my dad. He was very sad to learn that his favorite cigarette shop was closed for the coming few days.

For dinner we had the obligatory New Year’s soba noodles with store-bought shrimp tempura (which was also very saddening) and soft boiled eggs. We took our last bath of the year, warmed up and headed to Kinkoji Temple in Miyakonojo for the New Year’s countdown.

Starting from around 11:45pm, the New Year’s bell was rung 108 times. I learned last night that 108 is a number that signifies the number of earthly desires, and the bell is rung to rid of each one of them. The Temple itself was very homey and small, so we were able to ring the bell ourselves several times each. I heard later that at other temples, you need to wait in line and get a ticket to have the honor of ridding one of those earthly desires.

New Year’s Day

After getting home from the temple, around 1:30am, I got some futons ready for my mom and two brothers who drove from Tokyo to Kagoshima. A total of around 16 hours on the highway. I’ve done it before too, but had to take a nap break in between. With the three of them taking turns behind the wheel, they were able to get to my dad’s house around 3:30am. I waited until around 2:30am, but couldn’t resist the urge to melt into my own futon in my car and ended up falling asleep right before they got to the house.

9:00am this morning, my mom wakes all of us up to get the day started. New Year’s breakfast consisted of tea, coffee and cheesecake. Not the least bit traditional, but was perfect for those of us that usually don’t do breakfast. After chatting around the table, we finally decided to head to Kirishima Shrine for hatsumōde (初詣.) Since most people try to get to the shrine before noon, by the time we got there, the wait was only about 30 minutes.

We did a quick ceremony of claps and bows, threw some coins into the money box, got our omikuji (おみくじ) and headed back down for some lunch and snacks.

On our way home, we stopped by Sakura Sakura Onsen in Kirishima to warm up. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t too crowed, but by the time we left, the whole place was packed. This onsen offers a pile of fine mud that guests can use to pack their face and body. It’s quite cold and hard to rinse off after it dries, but leaves your skin feeling silky smooth.

That was the end of family time. After we got home, I took the opportunity to head out on my own since there are three other people watching over dad today.

I’ve been wanting to go to the library for the past few weeks, not to grab books, but because I saw that they had some winter lights on. I went for a little walk and was surprised to see that the lights were 100 times more extravagant than I expected.

I walked around for about an hour and after it got too cold to be walking around any longer, I came to my favorite restaurant again to grab a bite and write this.

As I finish this post, I’m thinking of where to go next. I don’t want to drive all the way back to my dad’s place, so I think I’ll spend the night at a Michi no Eki (道の駅）closer to town. Oh, the freedom!

Goodnight~