In the morning I go for an early walk to the supermarket to buy more juice, some ice cream and yogurt for Julian. I notice while walking that there has been ash-fall during the night. A light wind blows the stuff into my eyes (I can't see it, but I keep having to stop and clean out stinging particles), and the cars parked in front of the houses have a gray coating of grime.

Julian is quite sick, and sleeps most of the day; I spend quite a lot of time sitting in bed with him, taking advantage of the slack to read a good book ("Guns, Germs and Steel").

In the evening we watch some New Year specials. There's an over-the-top entertainment extravaganza on NHK. The show includes big production numbers: singing shogun-era warriors, modern pop groups (the guys from "Da Pump" sure can't dance), sumo wrestlers in suits and other historical and pop-culture icons.

On a competing commercial network there is a goofball show that cuts to various alternative millennium events, including a large and elaborate church wedding of two donkeys, a Buddhism spoof that rings in the new year with 108 farts (rather than 108 tolls of a bell). Flipping channels, we watch as a joint team of Japanese and Chinese students in Beijing successfully unleash a world-record setting domino chain with over 2 million tiles.

At midnight I escape the televisions (there are two, and they compete for attention), go up on the roof of the house (which is three stories and has a flat concrete roof) and listen to the bells of the temples and the foghorn blasts from ships in the bay and watch the fireworks in the distance. I note that, as expected, the lights of the city remain on and the traffic signals are changing normally.

Saturday, January 1

Everyone else is sleeping late but I get up before sunrise, hoping to see the sun come up from behind Sakurajima. Unfortunately there's far too much ash, and it's blowing in a direction that completely obscures the sunrise. I go back to bed for another hour, then get up (it's still early by the time scale of this house) and go for a walk to the waterfront district. The light is nice, and I shoot quite a lot of pictures, stalking old women in their New Year kimonos, delivery men on motorcycles (the post office is apparently open today, delivering cards and gifts), cats pawing through the unusually rich garbage...

Back at the house, Julian is still a bit sick (the flu, we think), but improving. Others in the house are starting to get it, however. Satomi's mother has been in bed since yesterday afternoon, and I now have a suspicious headache and sore throat as well.

We eat New Year food: sweet black beans (kuro mame); chestnuts and sweet potatoes, rice cakes (mochi), sweet pickled fish. All quite good, but my stomach is feeling a bit odd so I'm not able to eat much.

In the afternoon I excuse myself for another walk. I want to see the New Year events at the big shrine downtown. (Satomi's family doesn't go to the shrine on New Year's, so I'm on my own for that sort of thing.)

I take the streetcar to the Tenmonkan district of downtown Kagoshima, then immediately (and inevitably) head off in the wrong direction trying to find the shrine. Finally I ask someone and am directed back to a large complex just a few minutes walk from where I had exited the streetcar.

The shrine is much larger than I expected, and is crowded with people and festival booths. The site is right next to an open plaza area where a rock band is playing. On the other side of the open area there is a large Buddhist temple, which at this time is virtually devoid of activity, as the New Year is not an event the Buddhists take any special note of.

Shinto and Buddhism, the two dominant religions in Japan, have a long and somewhat complicated historical relationship. Many Shinto shrines are located right next to Buddhist temples, making it a bit difficult for an outsider to distinguish them. But the two religions are very different in their historical roots and their fundamental beliefs. Shinto is an old animist religion indigenous to Japan, with no dogma to speak of, a focus on nature, and multiple gods invoked as needed. At Shinto shrines, priests offer prayers for everything from good health and a happy marriage to a long-lasting automobile. At the opening of the new year, Shinto shrines are a buzz of activity as people attempt to get a good start with a prayer and a few tossed coins. In the Shinto faith, the individual is not made to feel guilt at seeking wealth and good fortune, and the priests do a fine and profitable job of extorting money from a population in search of a happier and more prosperous life.

Buddhism in Japan (introduced from India via China and Korea 1400 years ago) is a more dogmatic religion, with myriad seemingly pointless rituals and rules of behavior, and a strong focus on ancestors and on the afterlife. It's often said here that Shinto serves the living, while Buddhism serves the dead. An example of this is Buddhism's biggest yearly festival, the summer Bon Odori, which is intended to celebrate or perhaps invoke the ghosts of departed relatives. Buddhist monks are called upon to conduct funerals, to pray for the souls of children who have died (whether before or after their births), and (more generally) to encourage respect for family and the other hierarchies of society.

Risking the displeasure of my Buddhist friends, I have to confess more of a liking for Shinto, with its laughing and promiscuous gods, its less formal (yet strikingly beautiful) places of worship, and its incorporation of nature as the important ingredient binding the faith into a coherent whole. But Shinto has an unfortunate history here (not unlike the unfortunate history of Catholicism). After the Meiji Restoration, Shinto was invoked to help elevate Japan's emperor to god-like status, and became one of the tools used to create the nationalism that eventually led to Japan's imperial exploits before and during World War II.

But in any event I'm an uncurable agnostic/athiest and (Japanese flags hung from houses notwithstanding) there is little of that nationalism on display here. Instead, it seems that people are more concerned about their own personal fortunes, and those of their children. At the Kagoshima shrine I follow crowds of people past a series of fish ponds (filled with colorful and fat carp), up a wide set of steps and into a sort of inner yard of the compound, where lesser priests are doing a brisk business selling prayers and other objects. The prayers are printed on long strips of paper that, after being purchased and read, are folded carefully and tied onto wooden racks, or to the branches of trees or shrubs, or any other convenient place. By this time of the afternoon there is little space left for hanging the prayers, and I spot a number of them tied onto the rusted rails of a parking lot fence nearby.

At one end of the inner yard, another set of steps leads up into a covered inner sanctum from which I can hear chanting, the slow beating of a drum and an occasional chime. These steps are packed with people waiting their turn to pray, many with small children dressed in kimonos. Video cameras whir, pictures are taken, another year begins.

I head back to the house, where a simple dinner is being cooked. Satomi is making oyako-don, which I usually like, but the smell of frying onions suddenly makes my stomach churn alarmingly. I retreat to the bedroom, climb under the covers and spend the next twelve hours sick as a dog, wearing a path in the floor between the bedroom and toilet, unable to sleep.