Ōsōji

It's an old Japanese custom to clean the house before the New Year. The Japanese get rid of all the stuff that they don't need anymore, they pay all their debts, settle arguments and so on to start "from the beginning" after New Years Eve.
We had this big cleaning three days ago. Everybody was running around, hanging New Year's decoration, sweeping, washing, arranging and generally going crazy. We changed the bamboo cover for the wells; now it's very nice fresh green color:

We hung various decration; paper, leaves, pine branches (kadomatsu). And of course in every tokonoma we put mochi (rice cakes) and mikan fruit. Afterwards we will eat the mochi in a soup called ozōni:

After cleaning everybody went to a bōnenkai. It's a "forgetting-of-this-year" party. Everybody eats and drinks a lot... We went to a kaiten sushi place near Tondaya and I think I've never ate so much sushi as that night...

The next day wasn't very busy, so in the evening I went with some of my AIESEC friends for yakiniku. It's just "fried meat"; you can fry it yourself on a grill attached to every table. It was tabehōdai (all-you-can-eat), but I'm not a big fan of meat, so I didn't eat a lot. Nevertheless the next day I woke up with the worst stomachache EVER. I couldn't eat a thing; I only made myself some baby food and prayed it wouldn't be too much for my upset stomach. I suffered for a whole day and a part of night, but thankfully today I woke up to find myself in a pretty good shape. I don't think I'll be able to eat yakiniku in the near future though...

Tonight I'm going templing; I'll just go around town in hope of seeing something interesting, and if I'm lukcy maybe see jōya no kane (buddist monks toll a bell 108 times to cleanse all the sins that people commited in the passing year).