Getting ready for the New Year means a lot of things. One is finally doing a stem-to-stern cleanup of the house, something I didn't get to last year and it shows. Another is going out to Little Tokyo to get stuff for decorations and so on. Whatever Oshogatsu decor stuff I get this time will be recycled at the Anime LA Con Suite. I think I should have representative stuff from both the Japanese commemoration, which will be over by Anime LA, and from the Chinese commemoration of New Year, which will be starting up the last day of the con, January 29th. I'll probably have to hit Chinatown and 99 Ranch Market just before Anime LA to get the Chinese stuff.

Of course I will be going to Oshogatsu festivites in Little Tokyo on New Year's Day. It's always a lot of fun down there. I suggest if you are an Otaku, a Japanese culture buff and/or both, to consider going there for New Year's Day. There's also a second celebration going on at the Japanese American National Museum for Oshogatsu a week later.

New Year in Little Tokyo 2006
JANM Oshogatsu family fun day 2006

It's funny...I don't have a drop of Japanese blood in me but ever since Mrs. Ryan's 2nd Grade class where she took advantage of her travels in Asia to do an entire unit about cultures there, I have felt like I have something of Japan in me. It's not just my fondness for anime...it was the other way around. Japan is a complex place, not the "land of kawaii and sugoi" that some of my fellow Otaku see it as. Japan is both amazing and amazingly dysfunctional at the same time. I've never been, but one day I want to go.