New Years with family

New Years celebration is the big thing in Japan and you spend it with your family eating a lot of yummy food. As houses are small and Keisuke's family is rather big, they normally go to a nice hotel somewhere and hang out for a couple of days. This year we all went to a place next to lake Biwa, Japan's largest. We had some great food, made good use of the hotel's luxurious ofuro on the top floor, played ping pong and even did a little bit of shopping in the nearby mall.

Shabu-shabu on New Years Eve - which is actually not at all the big day. After dinner and some play everyone goes to bed early, what is important is to see the sunrise of the very first day of the new year. Keisuke and I managed to stay awake until 12.00, but it was just way to cool to get out of bed for sunrise next morning, no matter how beautiful over the snow covered mountains.

January 1st. View from our hotel window.

The whole family: Jiji, Shinjiro, Keisuke, Hana, Naoki, Anna, Baba, Kazune, Mary, Aoi, Kai, Kazumi, Harouka, Yoshiyuki, Setaro.