The Japanese New Year

As I mentioned in the previous post, the New Year celebration in Japan is much more significant and family-oriented than is Christmas. The basic celebration of New Year involves going to a Buddhist temple around midnight and joining in the ringing of a giant copper bell. The bell is rung 108 times to represent the 108 human sins in Buddhism.

We joined our multicultural (from Singapore, France, Ukraine and the US) group of friends for a dinner followed by a trip to our neighborhood temple to ring the bell. We stood in line waiting as groups of families took their turn directing a large beam into the giant bell. Each temple has a copper bell (known as a “bonshu”) and on the bell are 108 little balls representing those human sins. Below the balls is a lotus flower where the bell is struck. On the bell’s lower section is an inscription apparently that describes where and when the bell was made. Kyoto has some of the most famous bonshu in all of Japan (or so I read).
We stepped up to ring the bonshu and each of us grabbed a cord that was tied to the beam. The beam was suspended so that one only needed to give the cords a bit of tugging to achieve a nice loud crash. I really felt sorry for the Buddhist priests who were assisting with this process because it was really, really cold (there were actually snow flurries) and their bare heads and hands couldn’t have been comfortable. (Even in gloves my hands were numb!) Also, their robes didn’t look that warm, though apparently they will wear up to three layers of robes to combat the cold. Of course, only in Japan would there be a Buddhist priest stationed below the bell--not exactly a quiet place--to capture every group’s bell-ringing with their own camera. Ha. Kindly, the priests had built two small wood fires in the temples grounds and they were serving hot tea as well. No doubt they wanted to provide these creature comforts to their guests even though they weren’t able to enjoy them since they had to man the bell line!

New Year’s day (Jan 1st), everyone goes to the Shinto shrines to pray and give a small offering. Fortunately, there is a major shrine just around the corner from us, so Jim and I headed there in the afternoon. We were astounded at the size of the crowd and we dutifully waited in a very long line to reach the shrine to thrown in our coins and say a prayer. Fortunately, massive crowds here are very civilized and I have never felt uncomfortable in them. (It probably helps that we are so much taller; it allows us to see above the crowd a bit…;) ) When we reached the prayer spot (I’ll call it an altar), we noticed that there were many people in what looked like an inner sanctuary, engaged in some serious prayer or contemplation. My guess is that they must have gotten bad fortunes ;) ...for the other main activity at the shrines on Jan 1st is to purchase a fortune. Fortunes are available all the time at shrines, but it seems like the New Year is an especially popular fortune-receiving opportunity. At the Heian Shrine where we were, people shake a wooden container of wood sticks and pull one out randomly. They then take this to the window where the fortune paper corresponding to the number on the stick is distributed. Good fortunes are kept, but bad fortunes are immediately tied to lines or trees within the shrine. Following the receipt of a bad fortune, people will pray to the gods for a turn in this fortune. We have only gotten our fortunes once since arriving to Japan, and mine was the highest you can get, so I figured I’d stick with it! (Besides, the fortunes at this shrine were all in Japanese and we didn’t have anyone with us to help read them!)

Outside of the shrine there were tons of temporary vendors selling street food. The main fare: takoyaki (fried dough balls with octopus inside), okonomiyaki (cabbage and egg pancake-type things), yakisoba (fried buckwheat noodles), cotton candy (strange food only consumable by children), French crepes, shrimp crackers with fried eggs, fish shaped Belgium waffles filled with sweet beans (they’re really good), and frankfurters on sticks. Normally it is considered bad manners to eat while on the street, so I now relish these opportunities to gobble down street food on the street!

We then biked to another shrine that is quite popular on New Year’s and saw much the same scene. That shrine had displayed many pictures of tigers, which was a nice touch since 2010 is the year of the tiger. Roar! (The Chinese zodiac animals are used here as well to represent various years.)

I had read that New Year’s day is one of the times to see people out in their traditional finest: kimonos and fur stoles for the women, robes on the men, and wooden flip flops with slipper socks on both genders. Though we did see a few people dressed in this way, I was disappointed that the vast majority of people were not wearing traditional clothes. I’m hoping that many people chose not to wear traditional clothes because it was so cold, but it may just be that not so many people wear traditional clothes at all anymore. 
It’s really too bad, because there is almost nothing as beautiful as a Japanese woman in a kimono.

The final aspect of New Year’s is one that I cannot describe in great depth since we are not part of a Japanese family. Basically, it is a family time and grown children will return to their parents’ home to spend the few days visiting the shrines of their ancestors. Not surprisingly there are also special foods consumed only at New Years. Most of the foods are prepared in the days leading up to Jan 31st, because it is traditional for women not to cook for the first three days of the year—it’s sort of a rest period. For this reason, the foods are often smoked, dried or pickled so that they remain fresh for the three days. (It’s funny—three days of not going to the grocery store in the US is perfectly normal, but to Japanese women who visit the grocery store daily, it is an event for which to prepare!)
Apparently not that long ago, all stores were closed during this time, but now there is enough economic pressure that many larger grocery stores will remain open throughout the holidays. (Sadly it seems like much the same trend in the US, too.)

On Jan 3rd, Jim and I were invited to have “osechi” (New Year’s food) with Kazumi, a woman who runs a woman’s “tea salon” for Japanese housewives that meets once a month. Later this month I will be a guest speaker at the tea salon to talk about American culture. (Still trying to figure out how to structure that slightly broad topic—more details to follow!) In repayment for speaking, Kazumi wanted to teach me a little about Japanese New Year. Once we arrived to her house, we found that she had invited a younger cousin who was just learning English and his friend and they had dutifully prepared talking points under Kazumi’s direction. Kazumi and her mother brought out lovely trays of osechi and we all discussed the various components. There were pickled vegetables, dried cod, and all sorts of other hors’doeuvres all with a unique Japanese taste. I found them quite tasty, though I am a pretty adventurous eater (fortunately!) Many of the types of osechi were not parceled for four, so we dutifully used the serving chopsticks to divide portions. My awkward moment occurred with a slice of fish roe (fish eggs). There were only two slices of the fish roe and four eaters, so I thought Jim and I would both split our slices in half. Unfortunately, Jim beat me to the punch and shared his slice with both of the men, leaving me with a whole slice of fish roe encased in the egg sac. Oh boy. I tried to cut it but ended up making a huge mess of little fish eggs all over my plate and chopsticks to the extent that Kazumi’s mom had to fetch a cloth for me to clean things up! Oh dear. Once I couldn’t break the slice I was forced just to stick the whole giant bite in my mouth. Yum,yum. Let me just say that I won’t be buying any fish roe at the store any time soon. ;)

Perhaps the most special part of the New Year’s food is the miso shiru (we call this miso soup, though Japanese don’t consider it soup necessarily). Miso soup is a required component of the Japanese meal--even at breakfast--but there is a special type of miso that is consumed at New Year’s. This is a sweeter and lighter colored miso and apparently how it is prepared varies across different regions of Japan. I actually bought miso paste and made some at home which was quite similar to what we had at Kazumi’s. The only difference was that the miso at Kazumi’s had homemade mochi (soft, gooey rice paddies) in it. The making of homemade mochi is quite an important part of New Year’s (or at least I think it is!)

I could say more about the New Year, but this is probably more than enough for one post! In any case, we very much enjoyed the celebration and I have to say that to meet the New Year by ringing a Buddhist bell, eating street food, and shrine-hopping was certainly a more poetic way of welcoming a new year than the bar-hopping and drunken scenes of the Western New Year’s celebrations. I did miss my New Year’s Day Southern black eyed peas and collards, though…I guess old habits die hard. ;)