Thanks to the fact that the Earth is not flat, I can greet you from 2006, while you still have a couple of hours to go.
The lab students told me that if I were to stay in Tokyo during New Year's eve, I had to go to Shibuya to see the count-down. Shibuya is the bustling center of Tokyo, one of the centers of the world, etc, etc, except that at 23:30 the big screens of Shibuya were off and the place was silent; there were less people than usual. There were a lot of policemen around (maybe fifty of them), each using the traditional Japanese lightsaber.
At 23.50 people from nowhere started filling the place. The big screens were still off. I continued to look the blank screens, waiting for a spectacular explosion of light and sounds, but -- the screens remained blank. There was no count-down (mada! mada!). When my clock ticked 00:02, someone decided that it was the time - and the usual party that you can imagine started.
We then headed to Meiji-shungu, the biggest shrine in Tokyo, which is at the center of the huge Yoyogi park. There, we met The Mother Of All The Queues. It was night. It was cold. I think that every Japanese in Tokyo (most of them returned to their home town) was in the queue, waiting for the traditional prayer.
Even though I am tall well above the average, I could see neither the beginning nor the end of the queue. And it was cold. Being in Japan, an incredible amount of policemen divided the people in groups of about one thousand. Japanese people love to stay in queues. I used the time to learn the kanjis for "please wait a moment" and "now walk slowly".
Finally, at the shrine, people prayed and launched coins inside the temple, then went to buy some amulets. We too threw money and bought some "demon-protection arrow of Meiji-shingu", or else our hour-long wait would have been pointless.
After such an experience, was it cold!, a hot bowl of ramen is the best thing in the universe.
