Lunar New Year in Japan

We decided, hey since daddy has never celebrated the lunar new year and it'll be Minori's first, and I've never seen it done here in Japan, we'd go check out chinatown in Yokohama and see what happens there at this time of the year.

It was so crowded that having a baby in a stroller seemed like taking up a lot of space. We were lucky that the annual chinese new year parade came through the street where we were having lunch. The view from the restaurant's second floor was great, and we could chomp on our shark-fin soup at the same time! Before this, I had never seen a lion, dragon and phoenix dance with fire-crackers all at one go. I rushed Minori out of the restaurant so that she could have a feel for the environment. Also I thought, looking all appropriate and cute in her chinese outfit, she would stand a good chance of being filmed for national news by the NHK lensmen. After lunch, we wanted to get some char-shiu man (char-siu pau) but there were just long waits and queues at every stall so we gave up.

Back home, Minori got her first angpow in an otoshidama (Japanese angpow) envelope because we couldn't find the red ones here. Like everything else, she put it right into her mouth. The evening news came on and it covered the CNY parade but we didn't see Minori on TV. Oh well, their loss.