Much to my (pleasant) surprise, Japanese New Year does not include a mad rush to the gym. (Thanks but no thanks to all of the American resolutioners, I am happy to have the weights to myself.) Instead, a mass exodus to spend time at home with families is observed. Shinkansen (bullet) trains with an 10,000 person capacity, run every 15 minutes from Tokyo, bound for Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and every prefecture in between. Anyone without prior reservation would be hard-pressed to find an empty seat on the train. (I did the math. That is roughly 600,000 people leaving Tokyo for Winter Vacation per day!!) Apart from spending time with family, its Japanese New Year Tradition to visit temples or shrines and aim for good luck in the coming year.
Everywhere you look, houses, shops and stores are decorated with (Shinto custom of braided straw ropes) or kadomatsu, ( Buddist custom of bamboo and pine items), meant to ward off evil spirits. Sometimes, paper lobsters are made and hung outside the house. Japanese people sometimes believe that the underside of the lobster resembles a wrinkled old person, and has gives wishes for long life.
Supernatural New Year
Even people that don’t normally visit temples and shrines will travel to ask for blessings during the new year. Hatsuhinode, or the first sunrise of the year, has a supernatural reputation for being able to provide health and safety to those that observe it. As such, nearby mountain tops and watersides are filled to the brim with people ready and waiting for the first rays to touch their skin and grant them immunity from the year’s bad fortune.
Near Tokyo, Mt. Takao has a specific tradition with to welcome first light. At sunrise, a religious ceremony begins, called Gaikosai, or ‘The Festival to Welcome the Light”. Priests from Yuduo-temple chant sutras as the yamabushi blow into concho shells as people gather to watch the sun rise.
It is Japanese tradition that children under the age of 22 are given New Years gifts of money (up to 20,000/$200 per gift), and family over the age of 22 give gifts to all children in the family. These gifts are called otoshidama, and they steadily increase with the age of the child until the golden age of 22. (After that, expect to open your pockets to your younger cousins!!!)
Japanese New Year continues for 2 whole weeks, ending on January 15th in a celebration called dondoyaki, where everyone brings the talismans they decorated their homes with to a shrine to be burned. They drink sweetened sake and finish off the New Years closing ceremonies.
Other traditions include dressing in elaborate kimonos, wringing bells 108 times at midnight of NYE to welcome good luck into the new year, decorating the house with kagami mochi (stacked rice cakes) to ward off fires, and mailing new years post cards, called nengajo, to everyone you know.
New Years Food Traditions
People eat osechi ryori (ryori meaning food) which consists of a preserved dish made in the days leading up to the New Year, as it’s bad luck to cook on New Years Day. All of the foods within a box of osechi have symbolic meanings. Usually, osechi contains:
- Kuromamae –black beans cooked with sugar- for good health. The word mame means health, so these are to protect you from whatever might sicken you in the coming year
- renkon -lotus root- best wishes for a good harvest.
- Ise ebi –lobster- again, to symbolize a well-aged person; a long life
- Tazukuri- dried sardines- which is symbolic of an excellent harvest.
- Datemaki -sweetened egg omelet- (This one is one of my favorites!) They are yellow, like the sun, and provide happy, sunny days for the future
- Kamaboco -fish cake- It’s shaped in a half-moon, like a rising sun
- Kuri Kinton –sweet potato with chestnut- The golden color is for wealth to come in the new year.
- Kanzonoco –herring roe- Kazu means “number” and ko means “child”, together have a meaning of fertility. I’ll be making a pass on these for quite a while!
- Kobumaki –kelp roll- Kelp is a Japanese for happiness, so it’s prepared on festive occasions.
Illumination Traditions
Tokyo is full of miles and miles of neon lights set up for the holiday season. The Tokyo tower is laden with lights, Roppongi mid town has hundreds of thousands of lights across its “Starlight Garden”, and Omotesando street has over 100 trees decorated from root to tip in bulbs. Everywhere you look is a reminder of the romanticized holiday. I wish the rest of the world illuminated the way Japan does!
