Trip to Sapporo: Day 10 - New Year celebration; Hatsumōde

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In Japan, during the days of the first week of January, people often take one of their few vacations of the year and travel back to their hometown. There is also the big winter sales with characteristic Fukubukuro grab bags of gifts put together at nice prices.
The first days of the year is also the time for the first visit to the local Shinto shrine (or Buddist temple), called Hatsumode. In contrast to relatively unreligious Sweden, here people go en masse to visit the shrines, young and old, and it is a kind of open fair feeling to the areas around the shrine.
When shopping at Sapporo's fantastic otaku (nerd) store for new and used collector stuff, Mandarake, I got talking with the charming Minami and ended up being invited to join her and her friends (and another Swedish guy who is visiting!) to go to the Maruyama shrine Hatsumode today. And of course I brought Francois along too, as he is such a piteous guy too. (I will post a separate blog post about what I shopped at Mandarake later.)
Every shrine visit is different, so I will just tell you what we did, but here is what happened:

1. First you wash your hands before entering the shrine at a special small beautiful building. You are supposed to wash your hands and drink in a special order if you want to do it right, it's not complicated.

These guys are actually freezing their buts off… ;-P

2. Then you enter the temple and queue for the prayer part. Usually you go up the shrine stairs to a kind of box with a grille for coin offerings, but due to the extreme number of visitors instead a large area in front of the stairs was roped and people threw their coins into the snow. I don't envy the monk having to sift through the snow mush afterwards… ;-)
So then you clap your hands together twice and pray for something you wish for. Some do this for minutes. I may have done the clapping in the wrong order but it's the thought that counts. ;-)

3. Then you can go and buy paper slips (100/200 yen) with good/bad luck oracles on them. If it is good you keep it, if it is bad you tie it around racks put up to negate the bad luck. Of all six I was the only who got a good one, actually the maximum luck one! See the proof below. So I hope this means what I prayed for comes true. ;-)

4. After that you buy new amulets for luck or love or something else. These come in all sizes and prices, from small bells to put on your iPhone to big ones to show of at home. I bought a number of these for my closest ones at home (thanks again Minami, for helping me to choose the right ones):

After that you go to the fair/market outside the shrine grounds, where they sell foods, candies and toys.
All the snow got my inner child going, so we had a little snow ball fights and kicked down snow from trees also (a big sorry to the two old obaasans who got snow on them…). I looove this kind of winter, really!

I read people often wear the kimono-looking traditional clothes called yukata at this celebration, but these weather conditions I was happy to go with my skiing clothes.

This was another "fortune" lottery, this one related to your birthday. It was more like a horoscope, it seemed.

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Trip to Korea and Japan: Day 23 - Studio Ghibli Museum and Love in Shinjuku

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Saturday was dedicated to the Studio Ghibli Museum, a whole building where everything is themed and specially designed around the artwork and worlds that Hayao Miyazaki created together with his team. It is located in Inokashira Park reached via the JR Chuo line. Get of at the Mitaka station, follow the alleyway next to a well situated and almost posh houses down to the park. Afterwards it is nice to walk through the park with its lush nature, ponds and bridges, a petting zoo and small picturesque Shrine and then exit at the northwest end and take the train from Kichijori station.
OBS!! You have to book your tickets beforehand to be sure to get in. When we got there just a hour or two after opening it was sold out and I believe thats usually the case.
What surprised me the most about the museum was not that it was so well designed in every small detail, but that it was actually a very instructive and fascinating lesson in how movies in general and animated movies especially is done. From sketches and layering, colors and work procedures, to how light is reflected and lenses are created, and still paintings become fluid motion pictures. All this done in playful and humorous settings. Even the toilets were fun to visit.

Getting closer...

Gated community? Not quite, but the most affluent area we had seen in Tokyo. Ironically the one looking the most typically westernized also, which was worth thinking about one and two times as I really like Japanese more laissez-faire way of city planning.

The museum is below center to the left.

Actually it wasn't Totoro checking our tickets...

OK, so no photographing inside, so one had to take the chances one had.

Inokashira Park is well worth strolling through afterwards.

If you have not tried a shrine visit before, here you have a very nice spot to do it. Wash your hands and take a sip of water. Light some incense (that you can buy for 100 yen). Throw a coin into the box at the top of the stairs and clap your hands together and pray for something (or just contemplate that you are actually in a shrine in Tokyo, Japan...), and then ring the bell.

We stopped at Shinjuku on the way home which really had its share of skyscrapers which seemed to compete in some kind of powerful display on who could show the most cool but restrained architecture.

This one I had to visit as I have seen it in Japanese drama series.

Yeees, there is some "hidden" symbolism here, as you who are aware of my circumstances at the moment know. I am actually not quite sure about what I mean but that love is complicated.

Garret popcorn to end the evening, really nice.

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