New Year’s Day (Japan)

On New Year’s Day, we visit the neighborhood shrine to seek blessings for the new year. People come to the shrine to draw their fortunes. Though I am not a big fan of fortune-telling, I like to see people’s reactions when they read their fortunes. For me, the bigger attraction is the family lunch later in the day.

Earlier at Choshi, I met the “waiting room” cat. The waiting room cat wants to sleep on your lap and refuses to wake up. I was trying to take something out of a small plastic bag. When it heard the crinkling sound , it woke up. Later in the day, I saw another cat crossing the road to go to the train station. Maybe the cats work in shifts to amuse the passengers.