60664    The third air raid alarm since last night started ringing at 4:55 a.m.

60665    Fire broke out in Nishi-komatsugawa, Edogawa-ku.

60666    Six were killed in Nishi-kumatsugawa, Shitaya, and Kanda.

60667    The raid burned the homes of 800 households.

60668    Now it was New Year's Day.

60669    The time was 9:00 a.m., and the temperature was six degrees Centigrade.

60670    The Naritasan temple saw 3,500 people paying on the first visit of the year.

60671    The Emperor ate soldiers' food for field battle, which was one of the New Year's ceremony events.

60672    The year 1994 is over, filled with bleak trends and incidents including a lack of jobs, unemployed middle-aged people, and bullying-triggered suicide.

60673    On the night of December 31, approaches to temples and shrines nationwide were jam-packed with people who could not wait until New Year's Day to pay the year's first visit.

60674    The precinct of Meiji Shrine was full of visitors after 10:00 p.m.

60675    About 90,000 people lined up in the cold north wind, and rushed to the shrine altar on the drum sign of 0:00, January 1, throwing money offerings over other visitors' heads into the collection box.

60676    Mr. Manabu Maeshima, a company worker from Edogawa-ku, Tokyo, said with powerful religious handclaps, "I do not mean to be greedy, but I hope that the economic situation will improve.I prayed that four families including two children would not be bad-off."

60677    The Meiji Shrine expects about 3,550,000 visitors, almost the same number as last year, over the first three days of the New Year.

60678    Around 9:43 p.m., December 31, an earthquake jolted Okushiri, Hiyama of Hokkaido, recording an intensity of three on the Richter scale.