New Year's Eve in Tokyo

After our trip to Okinawa, we flew to Tokyo to meet up with my (Ana's) sisters, who had decided to visit Japan while they still knew people here. We met up in Tokyo Station on the 30th, found dinner at a local Indian place, and started to see some (fairly random) sights on the 31st. First up, we went to Shibuya to see the statue of the famous dog, Hachiko.  Hachiko waited for his master to come home from work at the station every day, and when one day the master stopped showing up, the dog kept waiting. This dog was so well-known for his loyalty that one of the exits of Shibuya station is now named after him, a movie with Richard Gere was released in the US in 2009, and there is both a statue:

and a mural:

We'd be going to Meiji Shrine for midnight, so we decided to stop there during the day to check it out before it was all dark and crowded. We happened upon the practice procession, which we didn't realize at the time was what we'd be seeing later that night as well, only from much, much further away:

Meiji Shrine is one of The Places To Be in Tokyo for New Year's Eve. It's such a big thing that they have a special  temporary subway stop for getting to the shrine, set up with temporary ticket machines and everything, so that the roughly three million people who come to pray at the shrine in the first three days of the New Year are able to easily get in and out:

Of course, street vendors take advantage of the crowds lining up hours early to wait to be some of the first to pray at Meiji Shrine after the clock strikes 12. We in no way were going to line up for hours waiting in the freezing cold, but we arrived early enough to enjoy some pitas, sweet potato fries, taiyaki, and chocolate bananas, choosing carefully from the long line of vendors hawking many of the same goods:

After getting our late-night snacks to power us through the cold time spent waiting for the drum to beat for New Year's, we headed back through the torii (gate), down the paths, through the forest to the shrine, where everyone was waiting. We were a bit further back than the middle in the sea of people waiting to get up to the front of the shrine's courtyard to pay our respects (and money) to ensure our good fortune in the coming year. There were a LOT of people, including a group of drunken young men behind us who worried us somewhat when hoisting each other up to get a better view. We were able to see the drum on the big screen, being hit 108 times for the 108 sins of Buddhism at midnight, but were so far back we couldn't get a good picture out of the extremes of light and darkness:

We headed back soon after New Year's struck, rather than wait for ages to enter the courtyard of the shrine proper.  We slept in the next day before wandering out to Roppongi for dinner, eventually finding an open branch of a hamburger place we wanted to try that was also famous for veggie burgers. My vegetarian sister joked that she came to Japan and had Indian food, vendor food, and now sandwiches and baked goods, but minimal Japanese food - it's difficult to find any open restaurants from about the 29th - 3rd of January, due to nearly everything being closed for traditional family celebrations in Japan, but we did have taiyaki:

Multiple times:

Taiyaki is basically pancake batter cooked in a shape of some sort traditionally containing a bean paste center but commonly served with chocolate or cream flavors too. It's usually in the shape of a fish, but comes in the shape of Duffy, a teddy bear, at Tokyo Disney Resort.

In walking around for dinner, we caught a glimpse of Tokyo Tower, where Lee and I rang in 2010. It was all lit up for 2012, something I honestly wasn't sure they'd do anymore now that the Sky Tree is the major tourist tower in Tokyo:

That's pretty much it for our New Year's festivities in Tokyo. We of course did a bit of walking around and gawking at the crowds and the buildings, checking out interesting shops, and seeing areas lit up at night, but the most important thing was still to come. Stay tuned for Tokyo Disney Resort, with the sisters! Check out Flickr for additional pictures of the food vendors, crazy crowds at Meiji Shrine, and other Tokyo adventures.