Tuesday January 1, 9:51 a.m.
Well, Happy New Year to you. Woke up with only 5 hours of sleep since I knew Mom would be early up in the kitchen making the annual o-zoni: miso soup with rice cakes inside. Plus, there was the usual blobby stewed konnyaku and black beans. No problems with eating them (although a few people in Japan leave this mortal coil due to choking on the rice cakes) but I sometimes feel that eating this stuff is more of an obligation than a desire.
Didn't take too long before the shots rang out here in Toronto. There were a couple of shootings downtown overnight, and apparently there has been some sort of incident near Vic Park Station according to the TTC reports. Life in the big city, I guess.
No particular plans but my brother's family will be coming over later today for dinner. Of course, right now in Japan, it's much later into the evening over there, but I assume that a lot of extended families are still reveling in the party atmosphere of O-Shogatsu. This will continue for a couple of more days at least. Over here in the Great White North, it will be straight back to the grindstone as of tomorrow. Of course for me, this will probably entail me walking just a few metres from my bed.
