Japanese new year

The Japanese New Year (正月 shōgatsu^?) is an annual festival with its own customs. The preceding days are quite busy, particularly the day before, known as Ōmisoka. The Japanese New Year has been celebrated since 1873 according to the Gregorian calendar, on January 1 of each year (New Year's Day where the Gregorian calendar is used). In Okinawa, the cultural New Year is still celebrated as the contemporary Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese New Years.

Traditional food

Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called osechi-ryōri (御節料理 or お節料理^?), typically shortened to osechi. This consists of boiled seaweed (昆布 konbu^?), fish cakes (蒲鉾 kamaboko^?), mashed sweet potato withchestnut (栗きんとん kurikinton^?), simmered burdock root (金平牛蒡 kinpira gobō^?), and sweetened black soybeans (黒豆kuromame^?). Many of these dishes are sweet, sour, or dried, so they can keep without refrigeration—the culinary traditions date to a time before households had refrigerators, when most stores closed for the holidays. There are many variations of osechi, and some foods eaten in one region are not eaten in other places (or are considered unfortunate or even banned) on New Year's Day. Another popular dish is ozōni (お雑煮^?), a soup with mochi rice cake and other ingredients that differ based on various regions of Japan. Today,sashimi and sushi are often eaten, as well as non-Japanese foods. To let the overworked stomach rest, seven-herb rice soup (七草粥 nanakusa-gayu^?) is prepared on the seventh day of January, a day known as jinjitsu (人日^?).

[edit]Bell ringing

At midnight on December 31, Buddhist temples all over Japan ring their bells a total of 108 times (じょやの鐘 joyanokane) to symbolize the 108 human sins in Buddhist belief, and to get rid of the 108 worldly desires regarding sense and feeling in every Japanese citizen. A major attraction is The Watched Night bell, in Tokyo. Japanese believe that the ringing of bells can rid off their sins during the previous year. After they are done ringing the bells, they celebrate and feast on soba noodles.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Postcards

Materials for making nengajō

The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times for the Japanese post offices. The Japanese have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcards (年賀状 nengajō^?) to their friends and relatives, similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. Their original purpose was to give your faraway friends and relatives tidings of yourself and your immediate family. In other words, this custom existed for people to tell others whom they did not often meet that they were alive and well.

Japanese people send these postcards so that they arrive on 1 January. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards on 1 January if they are posted within a time limit, from mid-December to near the end of the month and are marked with the word nengajō. To deliver these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part-time to help deliver the letters.

It is customary not to send these postcards when one has had a death in the family during the year. In this case, a family member sends a simple postcard called mochū hagaki (喪中葉書^?, mourning postcards) to inform friends and relatives they should not send New Year's cards, out of respect for the deceased.

People get their nengajō from many sources. Stationers sell preprinted cards. Most of these have the Chinese zodiac sign of the New Year as their design, or conventional greetings, or both. The Chinese zodiac has a cycle of 12 years. Each year is represented by an animal. The animals are, in order: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. 2008 was the year of the rat, 2009 ox, 2010 tiger, 2011 rabbit and 2012 is the year of the dragon. Famous characters like Snoopy, (2006) and other cartoon characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, (2008) have been especially popular in their celebrated years.

Addressing is generally done by hand, and is an opportunity to demonstrate one's handwriting (see shodō). The postcards may have spaces for the sender to write a personal message. Blank cards are available, so people can hand-write or draw their own. Rubber stamps with conventional messages and with the annual animal are on sale at department stores and other outlets, and many people buy ink brushes for personal greetings. Special printing devices are popular, especially among people who practice crafts. Software also lets artists create their own designs and output them using their computer's color printer. Because a gregarious individual might have hundreds to write, print shops offer a wide variety of sample postcards with short messages so that the sender has only to write addresses. Even with the rise in popularity of email, the nengajō remains very popular in Japan.

Conventional nengajō greetings include:

• kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu (今年もよろしくお願いします^?) (I hope for your favour again in the coming year)
• (shinnen) akemashite o-medetō-gozaimasu ((新年)あけましておめでとうございます^?) (Happiness to you on the dawn [of a New Year])
• kinga shinnen (謹賀新年^?) (Happy New Year)
• gashō (賀正^?) (to celebrate January)
• shoshun/hatsuharu (初春^?) (literally "early spring", in traditional lunar calendar a year begin in early spring)
• geishun (迎春^?) (to welcome spring)

[edit]Otoshidama

Pouch for giving otoshidama calledotoshidama-bukuro (お年玉袋^?).

On New Year's Day, Japanese people have a custom of giving money to children. This is known as otoshidama (お年玉^?). It is handed out in small decorated envelopes called 'pochibukuro,' similar to Shūgi-bukuro or Chinese red envelopes and to the Scottish handsel. In the Edo period large stores and wealthy families gave out a small bag of mochi and a Mandarin orange to spread happiness all around. The amount of money given depends on the age of the child but is usually the same if there is more than one child so that no one feels slighted. It is not uncommon for amounts greater than ¥10,000 (US$120) to be given.

[edit]Mochi

Another custom is creating rice cakes (餅 mochi^?). Boiled sticky rice (餅米 mochigome^?) is put into a wooden shallow bucket-like container and patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden mallet. Mashing the rice, it forms a sticky white dumpling. This is made before New Year's Day and eaten during the beginning of January.

Mochi is made into a New Year's decoration called kagami mochi (鏡餅^?), formed from two round cakes of mochi with a bitter orange (橙daidai^?) placed on top. The name daidai is supposed to be auspicious since it means "several generations."

Because of mochi's extremely sticky texture, there is usually a small number of choking deaths around New Year in Japan, particularly amongst the elderly. The death toll is reported in newspapers in the days after New Year.^[1]