Welcome to another trip report from my one year stay in Japan. Following up a jampacked November with a relatively quiet and uneventful December and January. As I mentioned at the end of my last report of November, I really needed a break from the almost 4 week long travelling and with both Christmas and New Year coming up, I was looking forward to a bit of downtime…
As per usual, previous reports can be found below:
[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/178mxdx/one_year_in_japan_the_open_air_sauna_june_july/) | [Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/17kfjpl/one_year_in_japan_escaping_the_heat_august_2022/) | [Part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/17yfls8/one_year_in_japan_sapporo_my_beloved_august_22/) | [Part 4](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1b1mkrh/one_year_in_japan_big_news_first_mistakes/) | [Part 5](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1b88w18/one_year_in_japan_a_most_enjoyable_kyoto_october/) | [Part 6](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1bi2lvb/one_year_in_japan_kanazawa_and_nakasendo_november/) | [Part 7](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1bsgtgx/one_year_in_japan_onomichi_and_the_famous/) | [Part 8](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1c0nfqf/one_year_in_japan_a_boat_ride_and_first/) | [Part 9](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1c8mxu2/one_year_in_japan_horse_meat_and_erupting/)
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**December**
Alas, I did not do any travelling that month. I mostly revisited old spots that I have previously been to during other seasons. My first accommodation was in Hikifune, which I very much enjoyed because I love the area east of the Sumida river. It’s just very quiet and relaxing, there aren’t many or _any_ major tourist spots here so it’s also not crowded and there are a lot of little local shops I was able to check out. Moreover, I had great views of [Skytree](https://i.imgur.com/xbYHqOw.jpeg) from the area around my Airbnb. Sumidagawa basically turned into my daily route back “home” and I loved it. Especially in December, when some of the bridges have special[ illuminations and Skytree](https://imgur.com/a/5lirou9) itself also has different colour schemes.
I revisited the Kyu-Furukawa Gardens again, this time with more [roses](https://imgur.com/a/SsAQWRn) in bloom and beautiful fall [foliage](https://imgur.com/a/7f0u6RK). Yoyogi Park also still had a couple of [great spots](https://imgur.com/a/CQvlwVk) at the time, although most trees had already lost all their leaves. Koishikawa Korakuen was [INCREDIBLE](https://imgur.com/a/eoiNJey) in my opinion and even roughly a year later when I came back to Japan on vacation, it was still not that packed with people so this might just be a great spot to go to in Tokyo to see fall colours in general. Since it is right next to Tokyo Dome, you can go over there before or after checking out the garden.
Now, one thing Japan does really well is getting you in the Christmas spirit despite people there not really celebrating it. There are illuminations everywhere, Christmas-y music playing, a _whole lot_ of seasonal snacks and what not. It’s truly astonishing how good Japan is at ~capitalism~ haha. _Unfortunately_ they are kind of bad at actually bringing over some traditional Christmas food from overseas. As a German, I love Lebkuchen and it’s kind of a tradition of mine to just stuff my face with that during Christmas time but I could not find any proper Lebkuchen anywhere except at a Christmas market…
Once again, I had met up with somebody off the aforementioned language learning app and we went to one of those Christmas markets in [Hibiya](https://imgur.com/a/HsOkRuD). Of course I had to constantly compare this to a Christmas market in Germany and I guess it was alright. I did finally find some Lebkuchen, albeit at a horrdenous price but well… I just had to get it to get a taste of home. The stalls sold typical, overpriced German food you find at many other “German” markets in Japan throughout the year, as well as mulled wine. It was an okay experience overall but nothing I’d really recommend if you ever find yourself in Japan during Christmas time. We walked around Hibiya and Marunouchi afterwards to check some more [illuminations](https://imgur.com/a/9IpiUo2), grabbed dinner and went our separate ways again.
I spent the days leading up to Christmas checking out any leftover illuminations in Tokyo and visiting [JoJo World](https://imgur.com/a/dqaoOOd) in Shinjuku. On the 24th, I decided to grab some[ chicken paitan ramen](https://files.catbox.moe/83yil8.jpg) in Ebisu (VERY disappointing) and then waddled over to Odaiba, across [the Rainbow Bridge I’ve had walked across plenty of times at that point. Buildings on Odaiba also had some more festive lighting](https://imgur.com/a/fo0NChN), as well as the[ bridge itself!](https://imgur.com/a/J7ydfYw) Fireworks were held in the evening, which is why a whole lot of people gathered, taking pictures and videos. At this point, my body had adjusted to Japanese weather so much that I actually felt cold while waiting for the show to start. It probably wasn’t even below 10°C, yet my hands were absolutely freezing. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the fireworks, stayed around a bit for [clearer pictures of the bridge](https://imgur.com/a/chjj4R0) and then made my way back home.
To be quite honest, this was a bit of a sad Christmas for me! It was the first time I didn’t really celebrate it at all and even though I enjoyed the show and the general vibes in Tokyo, nothing can beat Christmas with family.
Spent the next few days just living life until New Year’s Eve hit. New Year’s in Japan is more like Christmas in the West; fairly quiet, people spend time with their families and visit a shrine (Hatsumode) in the evening. I decided that I wanted to celebrate New Year’s at Kanda Myojin, one of the first places I visited on my arrival in June and also one of the 3 big shrines in Tokyo along Sensoji and Meiji Jingu for people to flock to before the “countdown”. I had spent most of my day in Akihabara, window shopping, losing money at some claw games, watching new ads being put up on the [SEGA buildings](https://imgur.com/a/YBXeHl0) (I refuse to call them GiGo) before making my way over to the nearby Kanda Myojin. [This](https://imgur.com/a/rRV6YqQ) is what the street looked like leading up to the shrine about an hour before 12am. The street is basically closed for traffic and they formed multiple lanes for people to line up.
The area [in front](https://imgur.com/a/M0gN3wm) of the shrine itself had a lot of food stalls, selling chocolate strawberries and bananas, yakisoba, mochi and much more. I went for one of the bananas and I kid you not, there were little to no people in this area at the moment I went up to the stall. When I bought the banana and turned around, there was a [line](https://files.catbox.moe/96qndj.jpg) to the shrine all of a sudden and I quickly queued up at the end, asking myself where the hell all the people came from! It was packed but everybody just minded their business, families talking, friends talking, people just having a good time and then it was 11:59pm. The final 10 seconds were counted down by the huge crowd and the New Year welcomed in with cheers before the line [moved](https://imgur.com/a/mVVesxK) towards the shrine itself. People threw their 5 yen (I think it was 5…) coins into the box in front of the shrine, prayed and then moved on. I did so too, threw away my change, prayed and then picked up an omikuji which told me I’d have “average” luck in 2023. Could have been worse!
Picked up some yakitori from one of the stalls around, then one mochi bun and decided to call it a night because once again, I was freezing my butt off. On New Year’s, some train lines have special trains going past midnight, which I took back to my accommodation and headed to sleep. To be honest, I really enjoyed this celebration more than the one back home. The more reserved celebrations together with the festival atmosphere was a great experience. And that was my December. Mostly boring from a pure travelling perspective but I quite enjoyed it, even if I missed a proper Christmas!
**January – Matsumoto**
Now, I didn’t want to take any big trips in January either because in February, a group of friends (two of which were first timers!) would visit Japan and we had planned a whopping 3 weeks of travel around Japan in that month, so I decided to take a short 2 day trip to Matsumoto in Nagano prefecture. I wanted to see the castle for the longest time and the weather forecast was saying there might be snow, which would have been incredible. From Shinjuku, it’s a ~3 hour ride on a Limited Express train and takes you through the mountains in Nagano. Matsumoto itself is surrounded my mountains and the [view](https://i.imgur.com/P8EgTXo.jpeg) from my hotel near the station was actually fairly nice. I had grown to love places that had these sort of surroundings.
I had packed some thicker socks and even gloves for this trip as I was already feeling cold in Tokyo despite temperatures not even being that low but Matsumoto was sporting minus degrees Celsius, so I was dreading that part of my stay. Up until this point, Uniqlo’s heat tech stuff had served me fairly well. Both the socks and the undershirts were great so I trusted the heat tech gloves would be just as good… but they were not. They did absolutely nothing against the temperatures and I actually felt like my hands were colder with the gloves on lol.
Nevertheless, the main attraction – Matsumoto castle – is not even 10 minutes away from the main station and a small shopping street is located nearby. Nakamachi-dori was the old merchant district and parallel to it, there’s a street with lots of small shops and cafes. As always, checking out every little shop isn’t really my type of thing so I simply walked through, passed a [shrine](https://i.imgur.com/tcRg5kS.jpeg) and then arrived at the castle itself, which is [stunning](https://imgur.com/a/JJZly9V). Unfortunately there was no snow but the castle is still beautiful (and a famous spot especially in Sakura season). As per usual, the inside of the castle has some [exhibitions](https://imgur.com/a/IDqfkE0) and the top offers a great view of Matsumoto and the aforementioned [mountains](https://imgur.com/a/Nr7aamW)! Once I checked everything out, I walked back to the station and into the Karaage Center to eat [Sanzokuyaki](https://i.imgur.com/I6EhFEZ.jpeg), one of Matsumoto’s local dishes. It’s chicken thigh or breast marinated in soy sauce and garlic and then coated with potato starch before being deep-fried. It was incredibly delicious and I regret not getting another round of it at some point.
In the mean time, the sun had started to set so I decided to [head back to the castle because there was a projection mapping show going on!](https://imgur.com/a/U03gyjv) Unfortunately, pictures can’t really show it very well at all but it was definitely worth to watch. Once that was over, I made my way back to the hotel because there isn’t really all that much to do in Matsumoto at night.
The next day, I decided to take a little walk around town by just picking random spots on Google Maps. Ended up going to [Fukashi shrine](https://imgur.com/a/uRNPKHI) and [Tsukama shrine](https://imgur.com/a/52gB2HS). In hindsight, I could have perhaps checked out a little bit more in the town but at the time, I really couldn’t find many sights or interesting spots and quickly realised that two full days were a bit too much for Matsumoto. Lunch was ramen at a small local shop. The owner was surprised to see a foreigner come in and he asked me a bunch about my travels! These small interactions with locals in places tourists rarely go to were always a highlight in itself. As just mentioned, I didn’t know what else to do so I just checked out the local shopping “mall”, gacha’d a bit at an Animate and then just bummed about until the [day ended](https://i.imgur.com/zq9HuXj.jpeg) and then proceeded to take the train back to Tokyo the next day.
**Tokyo**
On the way back, the skies were clear and I could see [Fuji](https://files.catbox.moe/tl9q41.jpg) from the train even. Didn’t expect that but Fuji is always a welcome sight on train rides. Back in Tokyo, I had about a week before my friends would arrive so it was back to checking areas around my Airbnb. Decided to take a walk along a different [part of Sumida](https://imgur.com/a/jB2Ut9o) for once. Random tidbit: went to a CoCo ichi on one of those days, not knowing they had some special prizes going on if you were lucky. Turns out I was very lucky because I got this CoCo ichi [spoon](https://i.imgur.com/UJz9xO2.jpeg) on my first try lol.
This month would also mark the last time I met up with a friend I made all the way back in September. We went to a yakiniku place, talked a bit, spent another few hours in Ikebukuro chatting as usual, made some plans to meet up in March once my friends would leave but those plans never came to fruition! I was somewhat used to people randomly dropping all communication, it seemed like that’s somewhat the norm with Japanese people who “befriend” foreigners. But this one felt a bit more sad. One could go deeper into this and dig for reasons but that’s no use.
I don’t have much more for this month so I’ll drop a few pictures of the [food](https://imgur.com/a/oufozyl) I ate that I didn’t mention somewhere above and that’s that.
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If you’ve read my previous reports, this one is probably really boring in comparison, I apologise. That being said – February was packed. My friends came and we travelled the entire month, went to some amazing places with surprise Sakura appearances (yes, in February!) and much more. So look forward to that one!
by Dumbidiot1323