My little adventure on the night of New Year's Eve turned out to be very nice but very short. I really had no expectations for the whole thing, though, so I just went into it with an open mind.
Mashi called at 11:45pm, "Hello.....this....is Mashi." Then he said in Japanese we go to Tokoji shrine now. So I told him I'd be right down. I was impressed with myself that I understood the name of the shrine and the verb for go, but not too impressed. So I headed down and met him and his wife just outside their house and we walked to the shrine, about five minutes.
As I had been coming out of my apartment I noticed the quiet of the night being enhanced with the sound of what was obviously a big bell. "That must be Tokoji shrine," I thought and wondered if this was the beginning of the 108 rings. So we made our way there with Mashi taking out three scraps of paper he'd written on and a small flashlight and explaining to me the significance of the New Year's celebration. His English is very rough but he told me about the striking of the bell, the significance of some colored beads, and a couple other things. Apparently he'd spent some time that day in a Japanese to English dictionary looking up words and writing them down on these small sheets of a paper; an effort that I can and did appreciate very much. Mashi really is a great guy.
So we got to the shrine and joined about 50 to 75 other people, most of whom were outside and in line to ring the bell. Mashi and his wife showed me into the main shrine (kinda small) and he showed me how to do the little prayer and light the incense (you don't blow out the flame, you merely wave it out with your hand I found out). So after that we went back outside and got in line to ring the bell. At this point I was wondering about the 108 times he'd mentioned a couple times. I tried to ask him about it but couldn't get my point across. I was wondering if someone was counting because there were quite a few people here, each ringing the bell once, and I was thinking, "Do they stop the 109th person from ringing it should that person show up?" or "What if only 93 people show up? Does someone get up there and ring it 15 more times to bring the total up?" You see how my mind torments me?
Anyway, we waited in line during which time the year clicked over to 2004 (or 16 by the Japanese timeline), some fireworks popped nearby, and his wife brought to us a non-alcoholic but fermented rice drink that I have forgotten the name of. It was white and had small pieces of rice in it. Mashi said it was good with sake in it, but we didn't have any (it was good without it too). Eventually our turns came and Mashi went up, then I went up, and then his wife went up. We each made a small bow, clapped once, and then pulled back on the medium sized log held up with ropes and rammed it into the bell. GONG!
And then we walked home. All in all, a very different New Year's for me. I am glad I decided to stick around.

The next day I hopped on my bike and rode up to Takeda shrine. Took a while to find it as I rode a little too far west and then took the right up the mountain. I knew I'd done something wrong but I kept thinking that if I could just get to higher ground, I'd be able to look back down and see it. Well, eventually that did become true but not without a bit of a workout.
So I rode back down the hill at one point and found the place. And it was damn busy. They had the normal street fair vendors out in front of the shrine selling all kinds of food and little toys and stuff, and some of the shops right there on the street were wide open for business (holiday? what holiday?).
So I walked across the small bridge and to the entrance of the shrine where there were some crowd control cops controlling the crowd trying to get into the shrine. So I waited with about a hundred other people and then the rope was lifted and some of us were allowed up the steps. But when I got up the steps there was just another long line, about ten people wide and 80 meters long or so, slowly shuffling their way up to the shrine itself. To get to the front of the line must have taken at least 20 minutes and when I got up there I decided what the hell? and threw in a 100yen coin and did the little Shinto prayer.
After that I stood off and snapped a few pictures and then bought two arrows that have New Year's decorations on them; one for me and one for Amy (who missed all this, by the way). Then I headed back down to the street, walked around a bit, bought some yakisoba, sat down and ate it, and then hopped back on the bike.
Again, I was happy I decided to stay here. Now I know how the Japanese do it.