January 14, 2022
Olivia shares her winter holiday fun
Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a lovely winter break. With both my first Christmas in another country and my first New Year's in Japan, the winter holidays were exciting for me!
I ate lots of good food (probably too much) and I met some great people who I celebrated the festivities with.
On Christmas Day, we all cooked nabemono 鍋物 (hot pot) together. It was easy to cook and delicious. We enjoyed it with some mulled wine. Mulled wine is what we traditionally drink at Christmas time in the UK so I was happy to have a taste of home as well as some yummy Japanese food.
I celebrated New Year's Eve with friends too and on January 2nd we went to Tokyo Daijingu shrine for Hatsumōde. Hatsumōde is the first shrine or temple visit of the New Year and I got an omikuji, which is a strip of paper with a fortune written on it. Fortunately, mine predicted good fortune so I took it home with me and I am in the process of working out what the different parts say as it is written in some difficult kanji! If I had received a bad fortune omikuji, I would have tied it at the temple and left it there which is done so that the predicted misfortune does not follow you home.
I hope everyone is well-rested after the winter holiday and looking forward to the coming year!
