{"id":145,"date":"2003-01-01T23:06:21","date_gmt":"2003-01-01T23:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=145"},"modified":"2003-01-01T23:06:21","modified_gmt":"2003-01-01T23:06:21","slug":"new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/01\/01\/new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"hakubasnow.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/blog\/archives\/blogpics\/hakubasnow.jpg?resize=350%2C340\" width=\"350\" height=\"340\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nHappy New Year everyone.<br \/>\nI just got back from two days up at Hakuba resort, about an hour away from Nagano. Went boarding both days, and spent New Year\u2019s Eve at a small house party in nearby Omachi. At midnight, we went to a small shrine in the woods, surrounded by huge, towering trees. As we approached on the snowy path, a huge bonfire glowed and flickered from within the forest, and the sounds of a shrine gong rang out. We were among several dozen people &#8212; children, parents, grandparents &#8212;  who lit incense at the temple, drank proffered sake, accepted a <i>mikan<\/i> (mandarin orange) and then stood around the bonfire visiting. The colors of the shrine were bright, and the bonfire warm, creating a cozy enclave in the midst of the silent forest, white with snow and black with night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year everyone. I just got back from two days up at Hakuba resort, about an hour away from Nagano. Went boarding both days, and spent New Year\u2019s Eve at a small house party in nearby Omachi. At midnight, we went to a small shrine in the woods, surrounded by huge, towering trees. As&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/01\/01\/new-year\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">New Year<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entries-with-images","category-life-in-japan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-2l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}