Happy New Year 2023

 One of the memories Kimball has from his mission is visiting Meiji Jingu on New Year's Day and watching people throw money onto the steps of shrine. He described it a "free for all" with thousands of people hucking money over the heads of the crowd and police officers trying to keep control while wearing face shields to protect themselves from all the flying coins. It made quite an impression on the 20 year old missionary!

Today after church it was a perfect, sunny winter day so we decided to make a trip to Meiji Jingu and see the money throwing. We didn't get there until later in the afternoon and I thought perhaps the main part of the event might be over - nope. We quickly found ourselves in the Mother of all Lines to get up to the shrine steps. 

But, it seems like Covid, plus the unfortunate crowd accident in Korea a few months ago, have really impacted the New Year's Day experience at Meiji Jingu. There are still thousands of people but now there are A LOT of police officers and they only allow small sections of the crowd to enter at one time. In the pictures below you can see a map of the route shown on a giant TV. The crowd line went up to the big screen TV and then turned right and went up to the shrine. They only allowed people to enter as those who were already at the shrine finished. It was extremely orderly! It took us over an hour to get to the actual shrine where we saw the money flying up to the steps. But it was not a crazy "free-for-all" atmosphere. Fun to see the amazing crowd of people, but very controlled this year. 

After we made it to the shrine, we walked through the park and out to Shinjuku to find the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. On the 45th floor of this building there is an Observation Deck. We made it just in time to catch the sun setting behind Mt. Fuji and see the lights of the city start to come on. 

Every time I go up in an observation tower I am overwhelmed with how big Tokyo is!! From this building we could see both the Tokyo Tower and the Tokyo Skytree. There is city everywhere and then in the middle, a big section of trees - that is Meiji Jingu where were just at the shrine.

Kimball made a very cool discovery that we couldn't capture in a picture - but he spotted the helicopter strip control tower here on on Camp Zama! We could see the flashing lights of the tower all the way from Tokyo. The Kanto Plane is so wide and flat its incredible. Over 1/3 of the population of Japan lives in the Kanto Plane (including us!)

In between Christmas and New Years we were invited to join in a Japanese tradition of Mochi Pounding. The owners of Zama Farm invited us over as a way to say thank you to those from Camp Zama who have helped on the Farm this year. (I helped with the Soy Bean harvest) It was very interesting to see the rice get pounded into mochi. Best of all, after the pounding we ate some - very delicious!!