Japanese New Years - all about LUCK.

皆さん、明けましておめでとうございます！今年もよろしくお願いいたします。
最亲的朋友们, 祝你们新年很快乐！
Bạn bè và gia đình yêu quý! Chúc cả nhà Năm Mới ăn khang thịnh vượng.
Moim najdroższym przyjaciołom, życzę Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku, dużo szczęścia i radości!

Happy New Years, my dearest friends!

A few intro words.

Japan, like the rest of East Asia, also follows the Chinese 12-animal lunar calendar system, so this year it is also the year of Tiger. But oddly enough, their New Year does not follow Chinese New Year in terms of timing. It is only celebrated on the 31st of December. So there is no “second” New Year celebration sometime in January/February. I heard it was altered like this after the war, during the restoration period to align with the American calendar.

A typical New Year house decoration. As the figure suggest, it's the Year of Tiger.

Japanese New Year (お正月 - oshougatsu) is a very special event and spending it with a Japanese family was a invaluable experience. First of all, it's very quiet. There are no fireworks, no music, definitely no partying nor even champagne (that one I actually missed a bit). Some companies or just a group of friends tend to organize something called “end-of-the-year parties”, but these never fall on the 31st.

Before New Year at Inami family.

For New Year I went back to the Inami family from the summer time. The trains were incredibly full, there were tons of people standing all the way to Kanazawa (that's 4 hours mind you!).

As soon as I arrived, on the 29th, I got taken to a mochi (a type of very sticky rice cake, my favourite Japanese snack) making event. Mochi is one of the very important meals for New Years and people tend to give each other gifts of mochi for that season.

Making mochi with that ridiculously heavy thing is an impossibly tiring work!

On the 31st, the host mother kicked me, the kids and the Dad out so that she can do a gigantic end-of-the-year house cleaning that lasted from morning till sunset. Only then did everybody gathered back for the end-of-the-year meal, which is most typically just soba. From the after-the-meal time till midnight, people tend to sit at home and enjoy the end-of-the-year special TV shows. The one I watched was called Kouhaku (紅白 - red and white, the Japanese colors for New Year), one big concert-like event broadcasted by NHK, Japan biggest TV station, with all the Japanese pop-stars you can name, participating.
As for me, I finally learned what the traditional Japanese Enka music sounds like, and it doesn't sound bad at all!

A note on this: everything eaten from now till around Jan 4th has a meaning. For the New Year Eve, it is soba, because soba is long and one wishes to live as long as soba can get.

Shrine visit at midnight.

At midnight, in the freezing weather, the host mother took me and Momo to the shrine. Exactly at midnight the bells started tolling and they have to toll hundred-and-something times, for the hundred-and-something human sins (wow, that's a lot of sinning a human nature is capable of, I thought). Because my New Years was in a small and tiny city, they actually let the visitors hit the bells themselves. So I too, went up the stairs, hit the bell with all my might, and went deaf for the rest of the night.

Climbing up the stairs to hit the bell.
That thing was freaking loud!

The shrine we went to (the same one where the kindergarten summer festival I wrote about took place back in July) offered us very delicious warm soba (so warm, perfect for the freezing weather) and some, probably “blessed”, mochi.

The Kindergarten shrine during the New Year night visit.

After freezing enough outside and praying for enough blessing, after slurping in all the free soba available, we headed back to the warm house, where we quickly warmed our frozen legs under the super cozy kotatsu (electrically heated table), my most favourite place in that house. Enjoying the hot chocolate and tons of Japanese sweets, we watched the rest of the show.

Warming up under the cozy kotatsu, welcoming the first dawn of the year.

January 1st .

The first meal is mochi in a ozoni soup and a assortment of food inside a laquered box. Usually a few level high, that lacquered box was supposed to, in the old days, be equal to a whole week of food. That is how much the Japanese eat for their first meal of the year.
Eating mochi is for your life to be as long as the sticky mochi can get when you pull on it.

First breakfast of the year. Still the smallest meal that day!

Once you're so full you can barely walk, the host family takes you out for the huge New Year shopping. Even though January 1st is a National holiday of course, anyone working in retail has hell, because it's the time for hatsu-uri (First Sale!).

The most popular item on that day is the fukubukuro (福袋) literally meaning “a bag of luck”. It's basically an assortment of product which you cannot see, hidden in a color bad. Of course you can only know what type of products you're buying (in ex. underwear, or food or cosmetics), but you have no idea what they look like. But since you're buying a whole set of it, it's discounted. "It's fine if it's some plastic, every-day use products like kitchenware or towels," I asked, "but how can you 'lottery' your clothing that way and buy them without trying them on?" According to the host Mum, if you like a certain brand very much, at some point you don't care what you buy as long as it's of that brand. Did you ever like any brand that much?

Rows and rows of fukubukuro.

But then, there's just something about the Japanese loving to try their luck on New Year's Day. Some shops even hold literal lottery sales. Pay 500 yen, pick a number from the box and if you're lucky you'll get the biggest stuffed animal on the display that the stand offers. But mostly, you won't get lucky and all you'll get is a plastic bentou box you don't need or want.

You also get to see some nice drum performances in the shopping malls, and in some other malls, there might wonder a dragon of luck and if you get your head be eaten by him, you'll get lucky ("How lucky can one get having a head bitten off?", I wondered?)
So after having my head properly eaten and my wallet properly emptied by the buying of the fukubukuro, it was time for...

Drum performance.

Host mum having her head eaten for good luck.

Hatsumoude.

… meaning the first shrine visit of the year. Again, the weather was very very cold. Seems to me all my New Years experiences so far are on the freezing side.


We wet our hands (in that freezing weather!) with the blessed water before entering the praying altar. Once inside, we also pulled our luck (mine was “small luck”) and had a cup of the best sake I've ever tasted – amazake (sweet sake), hot enough to warm us all up.

寒い、さあああああむい！Freezing!

Here's a short excerpt of my fortune prediction for this year:
恋(love) – don't go and get too hung up in the love sphere as to forget your studies (hmm, that's a nice warning)
失物(lost items) – you will lose something (oh, that's not very informative - I lose things once a day).
生子(giving birth) – smooth and safe (yeah, great, I'll keep that in my in case I want to give birth to a kid this year...;))
仕事(work) – this year will be tough (bleeeeh)

And since Kanazawa is such a small city, anywhere we went, we saw some acquaintances of the parents. On January 1st all families in Kanazawa are out.

After hatsumoude, it's time for...

Family visits.

And these go on forever all the way until you deem you've had enough of New Years food (usually called osechiryouri お節料理). Young families (like my parents) usually go to eat, but older families (the grandparents) usually receive guests for the meal. I've visited three houses in total, in each of them, I got to eat, among others:

Family One: host dad's parents.

Family Two: Host mum's grandparents.

1. Sashimi (what was the meaning of it, I don't quite remember).
2. Kazunoko (herring roe) – that was was completely inedible and repulsive in taste. And since it symboizes fertility in the household, I didn't really need to eat that either.
3. Kuro mame – black beans, a play on words. Mame, but in different kanji (忠実) means also hardworking and diligent. So for my diligence I guess, something I've been lacking ever since I came here :).
4.Ebi (shrimp) – so that I can grow so old I will be as curved as a shrimp. What a nice comparison. I'm not sure though I want to be that old. Though the host Mum's grandmother is indeed curved like ebi!


In one of the houses, I got to play a war game based on dice rolls. It looked really cool and flamboyant, despite the very simple rules: You just memorize which combination of two dices give you how much of the opponents army and given that make each member of the 2 rivaling teams throw dices. Whichever team gets all of the opponent's army first (meaning whichever is luckier) wins.

The Genji's army game. The flags symbolize your warriors.

I loved my experience and my host parents (let me suffice in saying that Momo, the oldest daughter, was meaner, louder and worse than she was in the summer). They not only took me to their family members as if I were one of them, not only did they let me stay with them for a whole week for free, they also let me receive...

Otoshidama (お年玉）- New Year's Pocket Money

Now that was something completely unexpected. For a non-related foreign strangers on top of that! But anywhere I went, I got it along with the host parent's kids. But of course they cannot give the strangers more than they give to the actual kids, we got about 1000-2000 yen per envelope. 3 envelopes in total. I can get myself something really nice with an equivalent of $60!

Having host family is great, let me say just this.