I dunno what time we went to bed the night before. Probably 4am or so. We all slept in until well past noon, or so we thought. Turns out that Mr. Tanaka had actually gone off to a sento (Japanese public bath/sauna) after we had all stumbled home, so my hat's off to him.

Sometime around 2pm, we all converged in the dining room for the big moment: the New Year's feast that Uena and Mrs. Tanaka had slaved over for hours the day before. Interestingly, while this is a very traditional meal, the ingredients vary widely from region to region—you'll find a variety of soup bases, seasonings and vegetables depending on where in Japan you celebrate the New Year. This being Kyoto, we enjoyed a mostly vegetable-based spread, as Kyoto is renowned for its vegetarian cuisine. The assortment of traditional dishes are collectively known as o-seichi.

I couldn't begin to name all the different vegetable rolls, tarts, boiled tubers, mini-cakes and pâtés that were served that day. I'm afraid I have no photo to offer you, either, as there comes a time when you have to stop documenting and simply participate. This was one of those times. It took hours to get through it all, and we were in no hurry.

The centerpiece of all New Year's meals is called o-zoni. It's a steaming-hot vegetable soup containing a very strange ingredient: mochi. Mochi is what you get after you pound rice with a sledgehammer for so long that it turns into a white, glutinous mass with the consistency of—well, it's hard to describe. Imagine biting into something halfway between marshmallow and Silly Putty. Only it's hot and it tastes like rice. Not something I'd want to eat every day, but it's definitely a soup to remember. I had two bowls of it. The Tanakas were great, and really made me feel like a member of the family. They peppered me with questions, and were delighted by my willingness to consume a bounty of Japanese dishes that even they eat only rarely.

After that, Kazuo and I plopped down on the couch and watched the all-day marathon of new-years' programming. The highlight was the annual Japanese costume/performance-art competition, a telethon of astounding acrobatics and visual trickery, in which contestants from all over the country stage theatrical skits seemingly inspired by Japanese Noh theatre, Busby Berkeley musicals and pop culture galore. There are 10 judges, and each can award 0-2 points, so the scores run from 0-20, with 15 points being the cutoff for the semi-finals. Contestants can be any age, although most of them seem to be students.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because one of the winners in years past was Internet sensation "Matrix ping-pong," which may have shown up in your inbox at some point. (If not, here a WMV of it, or a Flash video version if you prefer.) This year's very deserving winner was "animal judo," in which two women performed a half-dozen judo throws, each one forming an odd position which the referee transformed into an animal with the application of a prop. I recall the judo pair forming a panda, a rabbit's head and a giant alligator, after which they stripped down to shimmering golden leotards to perform the grand finale: a magnificent cartwheel attack which suddenly froze, revealing a huge giraffe. The audience erupted, and the three girls, when the hosts ran onstage to ask them inane questions, were so nervous and physically spent that they couldn't speak at all. I wish I could show it to you, but alas! I left my TiVo in San Francisco.

Kazuo, Uena, Maiko and I did one half-hearted attempt at sightseeing: a walking tour of the two Emperor's palaces in Kyoto. Unfortunately, it was freezing, it was dark, and both palaces were closed due to the holiday anyway. I snapped off a few shots, but night photography ain't my specialty, and both compounds are so wide, it's hard to get them into a decent photographic composition at the best of times.

Best I could do, folks.

But don't worry. I'll make up for it with tomorrow's entry. Believe me.