I guess a holiday vacation's last day is the last full day you get to spend with family, so New Year's Day 2011 would be it...I heard about a festival in Little Tokyo, so we headed up to downtown L.A. I finally took advantage of the route to finally take a picture of the downtown L.A. skyline from a bridge that crosses the L.A. River...

The Oshogatsu festival in Little Tokyo was split between Weller Court and Japanese Village Plaza. A stage was set up inside Weller Court on the first floor. Upon arrival, it was quickly realized that they were running behind schedule as I was expecting to see a magic show. Instead, we found a musical performance.



Outside of Weller Court, there were food stalls and tables for various community groups like the L.A. Kimono Club. As being my family's first visit to Little Tokyo, there was a desire to try some of the food items like taiyaki...



For lunch, I wanted to try the buffet at Oiwake inside Japanese Village Plaza as it seemed really inexpensive (those who have been to Vegas know that you can't find many buffets that are cheaper than $12 on the Strip anymore). It was neat that they also had New Year's ozoni soup in the buffet.



For dessert, I went to an old standby, mochi ice cream from Mikawaya. You can find these in many stores' ice cream sections.



Outside the shop, on the Japanese Village Plaza stage, there was a minyo and odori performance.



I wonder how many people in the audience could understand the writing on the sign for the song they were teaching us...

During the performance, I was amazed at how focused one girl in the audience was at the singers and musicians.



Although my relatives had to go back to work, I still had some vacation time, which I spent catching up on paperwork, seeing Disney's California Adventure entrance sign for the last time, and applying for Anime Expo staff...Those stories will be part of later posts, but my holiday vacation story 2010/11 has come to a close...