Today I went to Hamarikyu Garden where there were lots of New Year's festivities going on. Hamarikyu is the site of a former shogun estate. It's a large, multi-featured park and just about any time of the year there is a different kind of flower blooming. There's a three hundred year old pine tree and a tea house on an island in the middle of a pond. Today it was very cold and there was hail mixed with big puffy snowflakes.

Here are some of the activities I participated in today:

• I drank (free) sake out of a cup made from bamboo; the sake was from a barrel opening ceremony traditionally held during the New Year holiday.
  
• Saw craftsman making traditional items from the Edo period
  
• Saw a kitemaking demo and watched as little kids and adults alike tried to fly their kites in the snow
  
• Watched as people played various traditional New Year's games:
  
  • Hanetsuki, an Edo-period version of badminton played with battledore and shuttlecocks
    
  • top spinning
    
  • walking on stilts made of bamboo
    
  • Kendama, a kind of wooden mallet with cup-like indentations. A wooden ball is attached to the mallet by a string. The object is to manipulate the ball into the indentation, using only one hand.
  
  
• Watched a strange performance by an even stranger man dressed as a Samurai.
  Two of his tricks:
  
  • He pierced himself with a needle and then extracted it with his sword (blood was drawn!)
    
  • He selected a woman from the audience, placed a daikon (large carrot-shaped radish) on her wrist, blindfolded himself, then sliced through the daikon with his sword while leaving the woman unscathed.
    
  • Saw a falconry demonstration. This was quite interesting. Trained hawks and falcons flew from trainer to trainer; then they flew over the heads of spectators and back to their trainer; then high into the trees above and back to the trainer. It was such a thrill to see these birds up close and to be able to watch their graceful flight. But then, the show stopper nearly made me lose my lunch. They released live pigeons in the air as the hawks swooped and caught the hapless birds in flight and devoured them on the spot.
    
    Tomorrow we hope to catch even more New Year's festivities . . . if the weather cooperates. It has been raining steadily since dinner time. A cold nasty rain. Hope it clears up by tomorrow.