Our usual New Year festivity is a full schedule:
After watching the first sunrise of 2012 I made “Ozouni” mochi (sweet rice cake) in vegetable soup. Usually I make a very mild Ozouni, but this year I made it stronger, making Eric cry out after his first bite “OMG this is an *** kicking OZOUNI!”
2012 is a dragon year and unpredictable year.
Personally I feel it is a revolution year so I wanted it to be different,
kicking off with my New Year Ozouni.
Well, life itself is never the same, but I really want to change voluntarily this year, for better or worse.
Photo: My Ozouni 2012
After we each had two servings of the delicious Ozouni, we felt full and relaxed. We watched the Rose Parade, but Eric soon fell asleep with the dogs and cat next to me. I took photos of them and also felt asleep.
Photo: Our dogs and cat's napping
We woke up still feeling full, so we decided to go on a new-year bicycle ride on the beach. There were so many people there, and I imagined they all took a nap and came out for fresh air just like we did.
Photo: Venice beach performers with so many audiences
It was a zoo on the beach, and we had fun watching the Venice beach performers who usually come to eat at Seed Kitchen.
Photo: Eric with our tandem bicycle
There was a music band contest for the Rose bowl and we saw many people from Portland, for some reason. Found out that school of Portland was one of the band contestants.
As we were just leaving the beach there was a stunning New Year sunset.
Life is truly full of cycles within a cycle as our earth is circling the sun, and no moment is ever the same.
Photo: New Year Sunset
To cap New Year's Day Eric made a reservation at Shutter’s hotel on the beach in Santa Monica where we had our wedding dinner party for our family and close friends.
This was a surprise to me because he usually forgets a make a reservation,
but I can see he is trying to make an effort to start the new year on the right foot!
We sat by the window and had a wonderful meal.
After dinner we watched a movie (which is kind of a tradition in Japan to watch a new movie on New Year's Day), “The Descendants." We enjoyed this movie because they showed Lanai beach, where we went last year for our vacation.
The Lanai beach area had organic farmers and we really enjoyed all the fresh vegetables and the farmers market.
Remembering our vacation on New Year’s Day was a nice touch, making us feel our hard work is worth it, and we can look forward to the next reward after our even harder work to come.
It was definitely a full day.
Now that we have set the standard for the year,
we want to remember to live each day of the year to the fullest!
Love,
Sanae
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