Happy New Year!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year. As it turns out, that's also the first day of the Nagasaki Lantern Festival. Not knowing that it didn't really start until the day of the New Year (What?!?! A celebration that doesn't begin 3 months before the actual calendar date? Hmph...), we took our second trip out to Hama-no-machi arcade in Nagasaki hoping to see some lanterns.

We weren't disappointed. There were many lanterns hung and they were beautiful. More startling were the empty plugs so we will go back to look again. The lanterns ranged from simple red balls reading Nagasaki (something, maybe Lantern Festival) which hung all along the perimeter of the arcade to large ornate dragons that spanned the width of the arcade. It was daylight so they weren't lit. Maybe our next trip will have to be in the evening so we can enjoy the light. Roo oohed and aahed at them and I was just star struck.

There were lanterns all over the city as we drove to the arcade, too. I can't wait to see how many are up after the actual date. Apparently the festival lasts until the end of the month so we have plenty of time to go look around. Who knows, maybe there's a better place for viewing than the arcade. I can't imagine anything more densely populated with the lanterns, though, so maybe we'll just settle for that.