My First New Year in Japan

New Years in Japan is like Christmas in America, an important, religious holiday focused on spending time with family. There are so many cultural aspects to this holiday here. I was excited to experience it! However, since I don’t have a Japanese family, experiencing it first hand is hard. I got to experience some things, but for the most part, I can only go off of what my boyfriend and Japanese friends told they did.

First, nengajou are very important. Basically, they are New Year cards, but they are so serious about them in Japan! Japanese people write nengajou to basically everyone they know: family, friends, coworkers, anyone that did something nice for them that year, doctors etc. It’s a big ordeal, and Japanese people spend hours writing detailed messages in each one saying how indebted they are to that person and wishing them the best in the New Year. Post offices collect all the cards and send them out on January 1^st. People always are rushing to finish them all before then. This year I received several. It’s not my custom to write nengajou (I did write some Christmas cards though), so I only sent one to my boyfriend’s mother since I’m trying to win brownie points.

Nengajou.

Mochi-tsuki is also a part of the Japanese New Year. It means to make rice cakes. I believe they make them to place in front of their ancestor’s shrines as an offering. I’m not exactly sure, but perhaps they eat them later.

Speaking of food, there are certain foods Japanese people eat for the New Year. Osechi is probably the most traditional thing. It’s kind of hard to explain, but imagine a box with dividers in it. In each little divided section, there is a small arrangement of food like sweet black beans, shrimp, omelets, fish roe, and so on. Each food has a meaning. For example, if you eat such and such, it will bring you wealth in the New Year. Osechi is quite expensive. In the past, housewives and grandmothers spent days making it by hand in advance. Today, however, ordering it from supermarkets is quite popular, costing a couple hundred dollars. You can buy really cheap versions from the grocery store for about twenty dollars, but they are not good quality and sit out all day. For me, it was fun to look at them though…even if I didn’t have the desire to try it.

This is osechi. I took this picture from Google images.

Toshikoshi-soba is also a popular New Years dish. My boyfriend always eats it for lunch with his family on January 1^st. The long noodles are supposed to represent long happiness in the New Year, I believe. That is why it’s traditionally eaten. Another example of a long thing that is commonly eaten for New Years is eel.

The main event of the holiday is hatsumoude which means “the first shrine visit of the year.” Some of the bigger more popular shrines have large events where the streets surrounding it are lined with food vendors and such, like a festival. Many families go around midnight the night of Dec 31^st and line up to pray and receive their fortune. Sometimes you must wait in line for over an hour! However, you can do hatsumoude any time from January 1^st though the 3^rd or 4^th. People choose the shrine they want to go to based on their ambitions for the year. My coworker told me that her daughter is preparing to take high school entrance exams, so they went to a shrine where a famous Japanese philosopher is buried.

Hatsumoude was something I got to experience firsthand. Shinya went with me. We were planning on going to a bigger shrine, but when we decided to go on January 2^nd, it was really cold and snowy, so we decided to go to our local shrine in Shijonawate. Since it’s a smaller shrine, it was a little anticlimactic. It wasn’t that different from going any other time except there were a couple food stands set up. We got in line, tossed our 5 yen coins in the box (5 yen coins are lucky), clapped our hands twice, prayed, and bowed. Then we drew our fortunes from the container. Shinya got a normal fortune and I got 大吉 (daikichi) which means excellent luck. I was very excited!

So that’s about it for the Japanese traditional New Year stuff. I wouldn’t be a true American if I didn’t celebrate the New Year American style at all, so let me tell you about that. Traditionally, Japanese people go back to their home town for the New Year and spend time with their family, but some of my Japanese friends prefer to party for New Year the western way. So on New Year’s Eve, some of my Japanese friends, a lot of my foreign friends, and I met up at an izakaya. It was a huge party!! Maybe about 25 people! That was a lot of fun! After the izakaya, as always, we went to Balabushka for the countdown. I wasn’t that intoxicated, but damn some of my friends were messed up! One person went home early, a couple were throwing up, one was sobbing, and another was asleep in the elevator!

This is half of the group.

Saké master for the night,

The obligatory Stephanie & Akira selfie.

Fun times at Balabushka as always! Haha.

I decided I wanted to spend the first couple hours of the New Year dancing, so I went to one of my favorite clubs for like two hours and rocked the dance floor. One of the best things about New Years in Japan is that there is NO LAST TRAIN!!!! Trains run all night since families are out doing hatsumoude. I took advantage of this and decided I would start making my way home around 2 am. I wanted to stop at one of my other regular bars on the way home to wish the staff a happy New Year. I ended up chilling there for like an hour and a half. I met some girls from Mongolia and a guy from Spain and had fun conversations with them.

I hopped back on the train to go home at about 3:30, excited to be taking advantage of the train at this hour. I was dead tired though. Since it’s a half hour ride to my station, I set my phone alarm to wake me up one minute before arriving, so I could sleep peacefully on the train. Well, stupid me, I woke up an hour later in freaking Kyoto. This is the second time that’s happened… turns out in my sleepiness, and let’s be honest, drunkenness, I set the minute part of the alarm correctly, but forgot to change the hour, so my alarm never went off. I looked at when the next train was, and even though they were running all night, there were very few. The next train was in 45 minutes!! It was freezing out, and I had forgotten my scarf at the bar. I decided to sleep for a few hours at a nearby manga-kissa. It was definitely a good choice. I probably would’ve died in the cold lol. So despite the fact the trains were running all night, I actually didn’t end up getting home until about 10 am! I was still energetic enough to go have dinner with my friend on New Year’s Day haha!

One of the best things though is that for the first time this winter season, it snowed on New Year’s Day. It was beautiful, and somehow it didn’t feel like a coincidence. After all, I did get the daikichi fortune. I think it’s going to be a great year for me! I wish you all the best in this new year too!

Found a cute snowman.