New Year at Baba's house

As usual we celebrated New Year with Rika's family at Baba's house in Izu

Hannah was able to unwrap her main christmas present which Rika had ordered in Japan:  a Nintendo Wii U game console.  She liked this very much, although it turned-out late to be so addictive we've had too sharply restrict her use of it.

Daddy was able to sneak-off and train tai-chi in front of the Hachiman temple in the village.

One thing I noticed on this trip was that many rice-fields in Japan are being covered-over with solar-panels.   I guess this will become more common as the rural population as and declines leaving fewer and fewer farmers.

Back at the house, the family was busy preparing food for the Hew Year holiday.

This is making mochi cakes filled with red-bean paste.  The rice is steamed and stirred until its very gooey.

Then small balls of rice are rolled in rice-flour, flattened into circles, and wrapped around balls of red-bean paste.

Hannah was pretty good at this.

On Dec-31st, Daddy's morning Taichi practice was interrupted by a group of village men who had come to clean-up the temple for New Years ceremonies.

They lit lanterns in the temple which made it very pretty at dusk.

And quite spooky as it got darker.

We had the traditional new-years family meal of soba (wheat noodles).

And rice-cakes roasted over a charcoal fire.  Expertly prepared by Makoji-san

On New Years day we went to Hachiman Temple to pray and pay our respects.

I love the stone-work of the temple.

And the massive old trees surrounding the temple.

We noticed that some of the branches above looked like a dragon in flight.  Which I took so be a good omen for the coming year in Hong Kong.

All too soon, the holiday was over and we back on the train heading towards Tokyo and another year of hard-work.

Mt Fuji from the Izu-Hakone line