New Years Eve in Japan...

One day after church, Chris and I drove past this Buddhist temple on the side of the road. They were having a huge New Years celebrations with lots of games, food, and Japanese traditions. We thought it would be fun to stop by... although, we quickly realized that it would have been really nice to have someone with us who knew what in the world was going on! They were selling arrows at this little booth... Chris actually bought one. I asked later and found out that they're for good luck in the new year... each of them had a tiger on it because 2010 is the year of the tiger.















This was right outside the temple. People were throwing coins into these big pots and then they would say a quick prayer. Chris and I wanted to go inside the temple to watch everyone praying, but we were scared that we would say/do something offensive, so we just watched outside.















This is a picture of the entire temple... it's really beautiful and as you can see, there were lots of people there that day.















On your way out of the temple, people would receive these little typed messages (we think they were probably prayers) and would tie them to one of these ropes. There were just tons of these little prayers tied everywhere.















They had lots of games for the kids out along the street....















and of course what drew us in was all the yummy food!