Journal 20: New Years Eve.

It's the morning, the sun strikes between what little protection my curtain provides me with sunlight that enlightens the whole room. It's also 9:30 so there's no point in going back to sleep although I could use some more for the night that comes. So I relax again on my bed and stretch out to touch any cold spots on my bed. seeing as though it's going to be a hot day, my hopes were diminishing. Aha! Found one. Right underneath my pillow, I place my hand onto the spot and slowly drift away from the earth into a realm of my own.

I return to consciousness about 2 hours later to stretch out and sluggishly move to stand on the floor. I walk through the hallway and turn to the living room when I see my mother and sister eating wihout me; not even bothering me to wake me up. Hello? I'm hungry too! I plop onto a chair next to them and eat the food laid out onto the table. A rice cooker with eggs, sausages, and spam. I load my plate with some rice and "furikake", some eggs and sausages. However, I still steer away from the spam (And it's all Mrs. Nishite's fault!). By the time i'm finished eating and washing my dishes, it's 12.

And also, at this time, my eyes are in full alertness and ready to start the day. Since we're gong to have gguest's over, My grandma thought it was okay to clean the house before their arrival in 5 hours. So we mopped, vaccumed, sweeped, dusted, and any other form of cleaning we could possibly do to make the house all sparkly sparkly for their arrival. It's now 2 so I played Monopoly with my sister reluctantly only because there was nothing to do and nothing on TV. And of course, I won and was dubbed the Monopoly king. See, the secret is to get all the trains so when the opponants land on it, you get 200$ everytime. But I won't go too much into detail with that.

Afterward, I joined my mother in the kitchen to cook the New years "Nishime" (Nishime is a combination of thick seaweed, chicken scraps, fried tofu, mushrooms, turkey scraps from thanksgiving (shhh), baby corn, konnyaku ( I explained this in my roots and recipes essay), and kakenoko( bamboo shoots) ) Nishime on only made once a year and isn't too hard to make, but it's time consuming. also we brought out the jyuubaku ( giu-bah-ku) which is fancy containers also used only on New Years. we arranged Fishcake, Komaronokeeku ( fancy cake with japanese characters which you're supposed to cut it so there's a word on every slice. you flip it over and you reveal your fortune for the year and then you eat it. It ranges from Excellent to studious to pitiful, but it's in japanese), chestnuts, and more delicacies. then we covered them and placed them into the fridge.

Our guests finally arrive at 5:30, half an hour later than they were supposed to arrive and secretly through the family, this was expected. Since I really didn't want to talk to them too much, I just went outside with my dog Harry, wondering how he's going through the night because of his fear of fireworks. you could say he has Fireworksaphobia. After watching a part of the AFV marathon on TV, it was time to start the fireworks. And i'm the pyromaniac there, lighting up all of the fireworks in creative and unique ways such as twisting the fuses together so many light up at once, etc.

We first started off with the...um... I don't know what it's called but it's a thingy that's wrapped in paper and inside that, there's explosive thingys  that when you throw it on the ground, they make a loud popping noise. and then we light up the "Blooming flowers". This was especially fun because you had to light them up in your hand  and then toss them. This fun with lighting up rockets and firework propelled cars and foreworks that shoot up in the sky lasted all night up to 11:30, when we decided to light up the big long 20 ft. crackers with quadruple finale, but we saved that and went with the smaller ones with single finales. And the moment we've all been waiting for, when it hit's midnight, we'll light the big one in 10....9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1... It's 2010! and we lit it and just as it started crackling, the whole street lit up with noise and light. Explosive flowers shot up into the sky and bloomed with 2009's worries exploded. I decided to run toward Harry to see how he's holding up and as I expected, he broke into the house , walked down the stairs, and sat next to the door. He also does this when he see's us leaving with my sister's volleyball bag or my Taiko sticks. but this was nor the case. Tail tucked between his legs, a curved back like a nervous cat, shaking as if he was in the dead winter; he's scared.

After The noise died down, we cleaned up the food and swept up all of the burnt trash and apparently forced Harry outside, we prepared to leave for the temple. Every year, we go to the temple to pray and to let go of all of the bad luck. My family left the house and navigated through the freeway riddled with residue from numerous fireworks lit up at the gong of 12. As we arrived, we stood in the long line that stretched out far from the temple, and next to the river. To pass the time, we folded the dollar bills we were to donate to the temple into ninja stars and we dared each other to strike a ninja pose in front of the donation box. and as we were practicing this fine and lost art, a volunteer who worked there walked past us and ended up cracking up. Of course, we took notice of this which made her laugh harder. and we finally reached the box. Long and wooden with a giant rope hanging above it and I mean BIG! The height of the rope must've reached 5 and a half feet and the width was about 20. all made of this straws. And connected to that was an oversized cow bell attached to a smaller rope that hund down to my neck. so I prayed, did my pose, prayed again, rung the bell, clapped 4 times, prayed again, and left donating my Omamori ( luck charm which by the way, didn't do me any good) and bought a new one. And what happens to the omamori? they toss it into a large barrel drum and burn it. Kind of like a hobo fire. We left, carrying the many memories of this day in my head and I was about to run toward the shower before I assessed the damage my dog has done to whatever and as I expected, An automatic saw was broken, the mini christmas tree was on the floor, the table was tipped over somehow, and the garden was a wreck. but I decided to fix it all tomorrow and so I walked toward the shower, brushed my teeth, laid on the bed and almost immediately, I drifted away again anticipating the next day.