"Hiin Hihiin Hii!" Uma for "Happy New Year!"

あけましておめでとうございます！ Happy New Year to all my loved ones! Welcome, 2014, Year of the Horse and goodbye to 2013, it was nice while it lasted but let’s get this show on the road, shall we?

So how do the Japanese ring in the new year? Just like in America, depending on the region, traditions may vary, but also like America, there are several national traditions. Unlike America, said traditions are about paying respect to the previous year and focusing your energy and time on starting over thinking about your family and not so much about whose teeth you’ll be licking at midnight.

In Northern Japan, Shougatsu is celebrated very traditionally. There are traditional foods, decorations, events and activities for everyone, and everyone typically does everything with their family. For example, before the break, I asked one of the English teachers what his plans were for the New Year holiday and he told me he’d travel with them to his parents’ home and he’d take them all to an onsen. I couldn’t help myself: I said, “I can’t imagine doing that with my family, it’s just very different in America.” We laughed and he said “Oh, no, it’s very natural. I think everyone should enjoy the bath with family. It’s a special time for parents and children!”

Other such special times include cleaning the house. On New Year’s Eve, everyone in the family helps to clean the house. Having grown up with my fastidiously tidy half-Japanese mother, I’ve seen the abridged version of house cleaning. I couldn’t imagine how a traditional Japanese household cleans for an entire day…until I actually saw it in action.

Across the parking lot from my apartment, there are a couple houses with small families. As I moved in and out of my own apartment, cleaning-lite, I got a glimpse of their own methods. Futons were hung out to dry and subsequently had the dusty crap beaten out of them. Sidewalks, still wet from the melting snow, were scrubbed. Windows were cleaned inside and out THEN polished with window soap. Furniture and rugs were moved in and out all day. God knows what it was like inside!

The idea is to purge your home of the dust and dirt and bad energy of the old year and to start over completely new and idle from housework on New Year’s Day. Every mote of 2013 is now out of my apartment!

So now your apartment is squeaky clean, it’s time to take stock and make sure you  have all the proper decorations. The primary two are kadomatsu and kagami mochi, both of which have religious significance. The biggest difference between Western and Japanese New Years is the emphasis on spiritualism in Japan. For the Japanese, the end of one year is completely separate from the start of the next. In this interim period, the spirits and gods are said to come to Earth and be the most active. It’s a suspended time when two planes of existence become one, and naturally, respect has to be paid to the honored and invisible guests. 

Kadomatsu are large or small bamboo and pine arrangements that are placed inside the house our around the front door of homes and businesses. Bamboo has intense significance in Japanese culture, from being used for construction to tatami to chopsticks. It symbolizes heaven and earth, binding them together. The kadomatsu act as sort of a landing strip for lucky spirits, guiding them to people’s homes where they can reside in the bamboo for a few days, bringing luck and happiness to the house and starting the year off with hauntingly good spirits.

Then, on January 7^th, the kadomatsu are taken to the local shrine and ceremoniously thrown onto a fire. The eviction notice delivered, the spirits return to their own world. 

On a more  personal level, kagami mochi are rice cake offerings for the spirits of departed family members. The sticky round balls are stacked and placed on a small alter and decorated with flowers, pine branches and other symbols of the new year. Then they’re topped with a mandarin orange or “mikan.” Apparently, the original fruit of choice was a larger citrus called “daidai” which roughly means “generations and generations” and implies that many generations will follow the previous. Makes sense in the frame of reference: offering it to a deceased relative. But mikan are smaller, sweeter and look a little prettier on the mochi, so the tradition changed, but the symbolism is the same as always. 

Whew, you’re exhausted! You’ve been cleaning and decorating for days, and it’s finally New Year’s Eve. What’s for eats, ma? Meatloaf? Heck, no! Osechi-ryouri is traditional Japanese New Year food. The tradition of eating meals that can be prepared ahead of time and saved for a couple days goes back to the Heian Period lasting from 794-1185! The idea was it was forbidden to cook for the first three days of the new year. But things change. All of the food is auspicious, so they’re still very popular, but of course if you want to get a fresh bento from Jois or zap a cup-o-soba in the microwave, nobody’s going to blame you. So let’s review a few:

 

Soba: Japanese people eat soba for days before and after New Years. The healthy noodle is very long (excellent for slurping!) and signifies a long and healthy life. The more you eat, the healthier you are, right? Just don’t tell the people standing in line at Mickey D’s! 

Prawns or “ebi:” In the shell, they look like giant shrimp with long, wispy beards, symbolizing prosperity and long life. They’re usually presented whole in the traditional style, with their back hunched. Apparently, this also symbolizes old life. It’s like eating a little grandpa!

Lotus root or “renkon:” The texture is a bit like a water chestnut, but as you slice them into disks, they look like Swiss cheese! You can look through the holes and supposedly into the New Year.

Kelp or “konbu:” Westerners get squeamish at the idea of eating seaweed, but it’s ridiculously healthy! Full of vitamins, minerals and miracles, the beautiful green sounds like “yorokobu” which is a Japanese word for happiness. Trust me, eat a few konbu salads. Happy = healthy.

Sea bream or “tai:” It’s a salty, mild tasting fish, readily available at bonenkai (wink!) with a strong relationship to the very word, “auspicious.” In Japanese, the word is “medetai.” You can’t spell luck without fish!

Stuffed to the gills, what do you do now? It’s getting late, so better start heading to your local shrine or temple. Close to midnight, temples all over Japan ring out 108 times to scare away the Buddhist 108  Earthly Desires. 

Also called the 108 sins, defilements, or vices, with each toll, you’re meant to reflect on them and send them off with the old year so you can start over completely new and innocent. On this extensive list are vices like anger, intolerance, self-hatred, contempt, selfishness, prejudice, pessimism, manipulation, callousness, ingratitude, presumption, ignorance, lying, indifference, desire of fame, disrespect and self-denial. The list goes on. I’ll admit, I’ve certainly been guilty of a few of these, especially self-denial and self-hatred from time to time. But with the new year, I get to start over again, already determined to be more self-loving and forgiving. 

 

At midnight, as you stand in line waiting to enter the temple, you’ll hear people counting down from “ju,..kyu...hachi…shichi…” and with “ichi…zero!” everyone screams and hugs and the traditions of  “hatsu” can begin. Meaning “the firsts,” there’s a series of “firsts” of the year to check off your list. 

First and foremost, the first temple visit of the year. When you reach the temple itself, toss in a few coins in offering, ring the large bell and clap your hands twice to announce yourself. Silently say a prayer or make your wish and move aside. 

There are vendors inside the temple where you can buy slips of paper bearing a fortune, “omikuji.” Read your fortune by lamplight then hang it on a tree or on one of the large wood and twine racks around the grounds. 

All the temples also have a large bonfire going somewhere on the grounds. Priests or monks or just citizens bring forward charms and emblems from the previous year and POOF! Throw them on the fire and give them a good old Viking send-off! When I realized what was feeding the fire, I was really surprised! At first glance, it seems like a violent way to dismiss the old year! But when you think about it, it’s like a funeral pyre. It’s a clean, symbolic and probably the most respectful way to bid farewell to the last year. It’s like cremating a dead family member, done with love and honor. It’s a much nicer and more beautiful and moving tradition than macking with some stranger in a confetti cloud, drunk off your ass.

I went to Hiraizumi to welcome the New Year at Chusonji Temple. Thousands of people go there during the first three days to ring a large bell, say their prayers and pay their respects at the dozens of shrines, including the breathtaking, gold shrine, Kinkuji. 

Other first of the year include “hatsuhinode” or “first sunrise.” Families and individuals stay up all night and at the crack of dawn watch the sun rise. The condition of the sun is supposed to spell out what the year will bring. I couldn’t make myself do hatsuhinode, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered since at 3:30 when I got home, it was still dark and raining and the next morning it was still cloudy with a heavy mix of rain and snow going all day. Not sure if that’s a terribly good way to start the year. But at least the wind and rain brought a beautiful, thick covering of fresh new snow today! About a foot of it!

Despite the poor weather on the 1^st, I went to my local shrine and made my wishes again. I also bought a tablet with a horse painting. I’ll write a wish on the back and then can hang it on the frame in the shrine later.

“Hatsuyume” is the “first dream.” Pay attention to your first dream since it’s supposed to come true!

“Hatsu-uri” is the “first sale” and from experiencing it first-hand, seems to be the second busiest “hatsu” after the first temple visit. “Fukubukuro” or “lucky bags” are big grab-bags of merchandise that department stores put together and then sell for a few days at the start of the year. This brings in HUGE business since each bag can be between 1,000 yen up to 30,000…sometimes more! But they all get sold! It’s a great way to get rid of old product and attract attention to the new seasonal line-up. 

I couldn’t help myself and went ahead and bought a few bags: one full of chocolate, the other with coffee beans. Guess I’ll be spending a little Christmas money on a bean grinder so I can enjoy some of Doubtor Coffee’s New Year Blend.

 

So with my first Japanese style New Year under my belt, how do I plan to spend this year? The Japanese don’t so much have “resolutions” as prayers or wishes for the year. I myself definitely want to work on rebuilding my sense of self-love which since coming to Japan took a bit of a back seat due to a mix of obligatory modesty and negative influences. And that’s about it: I need to focus on making myself happier. One of my worst habits is forgetting to take care of myself, physically and mentally. But this year, I’m living by Mae West’s words: “Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights…into that big black space where the audience is.”