New Year's Eve in Yokohama and Shibuya 12/31/2006-01/01/2007

We had heard that there were fireworks to be seen in Yokohama on New Year's Eve, so we decided to make the trip to celebrate the New Year in something approaching Western style.

Pam, Matt, and I were joined by Dirk and Eitan, two other international students from our dorm (Dutch and Israeli respectively.) We got to Yokohama in plenty of time to grab a bite to eat and have a few drinks before we needed to head to the harbor

This is where we stopped in Yokohama. We found out later it was a chain, because there was another branch in the same building as the izakaya in Shibuya we ended up spending a good part of the morning in.















I leave it to others to determine whether or not this sign is Engrish (I think it is, others disagree.)

Eitan, Matt and Pam:















Dirk and I. Dirk, as you can see, is a spawn of Satan:















Once we made it out to the harbor, this ferris wheel served as our clock (the white bars were the seconds)















And here is the one photo of the monstrously underwhelming fireworks display:















We honestly might have been able to go to Chugakai (Chinatown) and bought enough fireworks to put on a better display. The fireworks Pam and I caught a brief glimpse of on the Narita Express from the airport into town were better.

In any case, we decided to head to Shibuya (the train from Yokohama went right there) and ended up in a very nice izakaya that served big beers,















great food (pizza and fried chicken seen here)


























And fortunately this sad state of affairs was quickly rectified:


























and Pam made a new friend. It was funny, she could speak just fine but could barely stand. This picture is also an inadvertant example of Tokyo guys shaving their eyebrows.















We stayed at the izakaya until about 4:30 then Pam and I got our picture taken with Hachiko















and we headed back to the dorm, where I shot this picture of a tiny little shrine near my place:















And we proceeded to sleep until 2pm, only venturing out on New Year's Day for curry