New Year Snow!

We are getting ready for the New Year in Japan. It is an important holiday, when people return home for about 3 to 4 days, visit the shrines, get cozy, eat special foods. Almost everybody celebrates, because almost all stores, restaurants, and businesses close down--for about three or four days. Including our grocery store.

In fact, most places were even shut today (new years' eve). See?

Some places were shut starting the 27th, so that people could stay home and get their major end-of-year cleaning done. As we walked around the neighborhood this past three days, we heard LOTs of vacuum cleaners!

You've seen our refrigerator, right? So here's a math problem: Five people. Four days. Three meals a day. Plus 1.5 cubic feet of refrigerator space equals....hmmmmm....

Anyway, we don't care anymore because there's always 7-11, and also, it snowed today!!!

We visited the Imperial Palace (our unofficial backyard) to play:

Somebody stopped to ask about our snowmen. "Do American snowmen usually have legs?" she asked.

It's a little surreal to think that a few short days ago we were here:

Yoi otoshi o....