New years in Japan is a spe­cial day, almost a pil­grim­age; every­one goes at mid­night to the local or big tem­ple thats around.  Though some will party, some will do noth­ing, but the major­ity do exactly that!

Now since this is infa­mous me were talk­ing about, I decided to run around the major spots of Tokyo that New Years Night.  I packed all my gear, in my kata cam­era bag; one DSLR with 2 lenses, one point and shoot that dou­bles as a video cam­era, extra cam­era bat­ter­ies and mem­ory cards, one charged up EEE pc 901-X run­ning leop­ard, and all the asso­ci­ated cables.  Made sure my Suica card was charged up, as the trains run threw the new year!

I orig­i­nally planned to go to as many tem­ples I could before sun up, but as Tokyo goes, plans changed.  I went to my fam­ily away from home, watched the new years begin, had a fancy dou­ble espresso then said good­bye and headed off to Meji Shrine (Hara­juku Sta­tion).  This shrine is the “Big” one as far as the amount of peo­ple that visit it! To be hon­est, I didn’t expect it to be nearly as busy as it was! It was crazy!!  After that I hoped on the Yamanote-sen again to Shin­juku Sta­tion, to see how that “side” of Tokyo was ring­ing in the new year. To my amaze­ment it was rel­a­tively dead (much busier on a fri­day night). I ended up mind­lessly waltz­ing to Mis­ter Donut, hav­ing a pan-de-ring and french cruller, and a cup of joe. Next was ven­er­a­ble Shibuya, I for sure thought they would be par­ty­ing around the Hachiko exit.  Sure enough, even less peo­ple!  Where did all the  peo­ple go!  I did get some video of some crazy Japan­ese peo­ple, so it was worth it regardless.

At that point I was start­ing to feel the side-effects of hours of stand­ing and walk­ing in the wee-morning.  I decided it was best to find a McDon­alds and have a Ginger-Ale while wait­ing for the Star­bucks over Shibuya cross­ing to open (6:30 for any­one that cares).

One thing I haven’t been able to see yet here, that is seem­ingly ran­dom, but some­how fit­ting for a new year; is the sun­rise in a big, sky-scraper filled city.  It is truly a majes­tic sight, the sky slowly gets blueish, just at the crest of the build­ings. How­ever all the flash­ing lights, and the neon candy signs are all still ablaze with color. The glow gets brighter and brighter, just like some­thing is com­ing in the dis­tance. All the while peo­ple are walk­ing around in the streets, happy for the new year, and of course a bit tipsy!  Since when do you see peo­ple run­ning and jump­ing into a huge pile of boxes? Just like when they were kids. The energy you feel going around is intox­i­cat­ing, every­one is loud, and punch-drunk with hap­pi­ness. Then the lights start to turn off, every­thing is slowly return­ing to how it usu­ally is.

In the end it is still Tokyo, and now is 2009.