"What's it like living in the future?" When my friends back home in the U.S. realize Japan is a day ahead of them, they can't help but ask this question.

I usually respond with an overly detailed account of living in a nightmarish dystopia similar to something you'd see in "Blade Runner," or give them questionable gambling advice, like "Take out a second mortgage and put it all on the Lions to cover the spread. Trust me."

But the reality is, living a day ahead of friends and family adds a conceptual distance to the very real miles between us, and celebrating New Year's in Japan only serves to amplify how far we are from yesterday. The month of bōnenkai (literally, "forget-the-year parties") preceding the holiday are a gauntlet of obligatory drinking with coworkers, friends and . . . whoever that guy was — wait, who was that guy anyway? No matter, forgetting is the whole point.