Celebrating the new year (Oshōgatsu) in Japan is so important that it requires several days to prepare for, and several days to celebrate. Yesterday I wrote about cleaning and putting out the decorations. Today, I want to talk about other year-end customs in Japan.
Wrapping Up Unfinished Business
In Japan, although the fiscal year doesn't end until March 31, it's important to wrap up as much unfinished business as possible before the calendar year ends, so Japanese individuals and businesses try to get all their contract obligations met and their debts paid by December 31, all of which causes heavier-than-usual traffic in the streets of the big cities. As well, businesses use the last few days of the old calendar year to reflect on the year's mistakes and plan for a prosperous new year.
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Winter Solstice
Women taking yuzu-yu bath in a public bath. (Most public baths are separated by sex nowadays.) |
Yuzu-yu in an ofuro bathtub at home. |
Yuzu ( ユズ ) are the small yellow fruit. Mikan (Mandarin oranges) are bigger and more orange. |
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New Year Foods
Dry soba buckwheat noodles |
One of the foods that is eaten on New Year's Eve (Ōmisoka) is long, thin buckwheat noodles (soba). This dish is called toshikoshi soba (passing of the old year noodles). These days a lot of people keep soba restaurants busy on New Year's Eve instead of making them at home, but the noodles have to be eaten before midnight, or bad luck will ensue.
If soba is served cold, the noodles are dipped in sauce. |
Toshikoshi soba served warm |
Buckwheat noodles shouldn't be too thin; get thicker ones or you will have a lot of breakage. When you boil the buckwheat noodles, remember that you don't need to bring them to a rolling boil. Just simmer them a bit, then when they are soft, drain them and plunge them into cold water and rinse them well to make sure the starchy stuff comes off.
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Here's the recipe for buckwheat noodles, from About.com:
6 cups dashi (See recipe below)
3 tablespoons mirin (rice wine; buy this in the Asian food section)
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/3 cup soy sauce (My advice: use Kikkoman and you may prefer the Lite variety)
9 to 10 ounces soba noodles, cooked according to package directions (then plunged into cold water and rinsed well)
Shredded nori (seaweed - see my remarks above)
Additional toppings as desired: chopped green onion, lightly blanched spinach, mock crab - see above)
1. Mix the dashi, mirin, and sugar together in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low and let the mixture simmer for 3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and slowly heat the sauce through, stirring, making sure that it doesn’t boil.
2. Place the noodles in bowls and pour the hot broth over the noodles. Top with shredded nori and additional toppings as desired. (You can make the sauce and then chill it, then pour it over cold noodles, or you can put the noodles in the sauce and chill the whole shebang in your fridge.)
3. If you serve the noodles cold, they don't have to be swimming in sauce. You can use soba noodle dipping sauce, which will be stronger than the soup broth you use for hot soba noodles, but remember that you can always weaken it with water.
Here's a simple recipe for dashi from About.com:
Ingredients: 3 1/4 cups water and 2/3 oz. katsuobushi (dried bonito fish flakes)
Preparation: Put
water in a deep pot and heat on medium heat. Just before the water
boils, add katsuobushi flakes. When the water boils, skim off any foam
that rises to the surface. Turn off the heat. Let it set until katsuobushi
flakes sink. Place a paper towel in a colander and strain the stock
through it.
Makes about 3 cups For several bowls of noodles, double this recipe.
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Chirashizushi. For a great recipe (scroll down) go to this web site. This is made before New Year's Eve but meant to be eaten on New Year's Day. If you put it in the fridge, just sprinkle it with a little water and warm it up. |
Traditional New Year foods (osechi ryōri) served in lacquered boxes |
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New Year Postcards
Typical New Year card for 2014 The character in gold is for "horse' because 2014 is the Year of the Horse. |
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Mochi and Kagami Mochi Decorations
Plain mochi (sweet rice cakes) |
Pounding the mochi |
Here are two different kagami mochi displays. |
A couple of cakes of mochi are always used to make a kagami mochi decoration for good fortune. The smaller rice cake is placed on top of the larger one,with a daidai (Japanese bitter orange) that has an attached leaf, plus, optionally, a sheet of kombu (seaweed) and a skewer of dried persimmons under the mochi. The arrangement sits on a stand called a sanpō over a sheet called a shihōbeni. This is supposed to ward off fires from starting. Sheets of paper called gohei folded into lightning shapes similar to those seen on sumo wrestler's belts are also attached. The kagami mochi can be placed in a Shintō altar or in the tokonoma of the house. If the family is Buddhist, a three-layered kagami mochi can be used in the household Buddhist altar, called butsudan.
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Gift Giving
There is a year-end gift-giving tradition that is not necessarily associated with New Year's Day (oseibō), and since there is a similar gift-giving custom in midsummer (o-chūgen) I'm going to describe these in a separate post.
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Bōnenkai Parties
There is one more tradition kept alive by university students and office workers: the bōnenkai, or, literally, "forget-the-old-year" parties. (Married women who don't work outside the home don't participate in these and I suspect that married women who do work in offices don't attend these.) This is basically a drinking party. It's very close to the type of New Year's Eve party we have in the west, except it is never held in a private home, and it is never held on New Year's Eve.Bōnenkai parties are not held on any particular day of the year, but generally speaking they occur during the last two weeks in December, and they are never held on New Year's Eve or in January. This custom apparently got started in the 15th century as a gathering to express thanks. They were known as nōkai (achieved a great thing party) at the time. By the 18th century, the custom had come to be known as bōnenkai. These parties are almost the only time when the rules of the traditional boss/employee relationship can be relaxed and everyone can have a good time. Everyone generally contributes a set amount of money, perhaps 5,000 yen (a little under 50 dollars). If this seems like an exorbitant amount, it is, but remember that the employees are expecting this expense and they save up for it. The highest level bosses generally only stay for a short time, then go home to their wives. The younger employees, however, extend the party by bar-hopping together, and the youngest employees are often made to pay for drinks for the older ones. Basically, what happens next is they try to drink each other under the table. These days, apparently, some companies are opting to hold their bōnenkai on their business premises after hours to save money, but I suspect that the young people still go bar-hopping afterwards.
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New Year's Eve
As you can see by the score, last year's "battle" was won by the white team, the men. |
When the show was first performed on radio in 1951, there were fewer singers and the whole show was done in an hour. Now it goes on for at least four hours, and just as we do for the Golden Globe Awards or any other awards show in the west, people watch carefully to see what their favorite performers are wearing, and how they style their hair.
It used to be that the live studio audience plus the judges chose the winners, but as you can imagine, people in the TV audience can now vote by cellphone or through their digital TV. Of 63 contests so far, the white team has one 34 times and the red team has won 29 times.
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Buddhist Temple BellsTemple bells are huge. They are rung with a large wooden battering ram suspended on ropes that allow the ram to be swung to hit the bell. The sound is out of this world. |
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How to say Happy New Year
Last, but not least, it's important to know that saying Happy New Year is a little complicated, because it depends on when you say it.A formal way to say Happy New Year in December (the last time you see someone before New Year's Eve) is Yoi otoshi o omukae kudasai. よいお年をお迎えください。A little less formally, you can shorten it to Yoi otoshi o. Another, more Western way to say it is simply Shin-nen omedetō gozaimasu. 新年おめでとうございます。
In addition, the last time you see a client, colleague, friend or relative before New Year's Day, you should also use the following expressions: Kotoshi wa iroiro osewa ni narimashita. 今年はいろいろおせわになりました。 (Thank you for your help this year.) Rainen mo, yoroshiku onegai shimasu. 来年も、よろしくおねがいします。(Please give me your favor next year, as well.) The last business letter or email of the old year often contains these expressions. I will post the expressions for New Year's Day later. :-)
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