Celebrating New Year's in Japan

Over the New Year Holiday I spent the time with my in-laws and our extended family here in Japan. As with all holidays, food tends to be the main feature. If you have had the chance to eat Osechi the first thing you will notice is the mixture of colors. Osechi has a wide mixture of different foods and a beautiful mixture of colors. Each of the foods has a special meaning that will bring you good fortune for the New Year. The other main ingredient of the New Year season is of course mochi. This was the first time I had zoni soup which is a soup with the soft mochi rice cakes inside. A very chewy and sticky mess but tasted great!

The other part of the Japanese New Year holiday that I really enjoy is the television show Kohaku. This is broadcast on NHK every holiday and is a battle between popular music artists which create red and white teams. The white team is comprised of the female artist and the red team of the male artist. It is a great way to see the popular musicians in Japan from the past year.

by Brian W

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Ringing in 2010: Some Resolutions

It’s a new year, and for me that means reprising some rather strange traditions. For the past 6 years at some point close to the New Year event, I read Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush.” This began in university when every professor thought they were being immensely clever by putting it on the course list to correspond with New Year. This is, of course, very much like the other , clever thing that professors do when they put their due dates either the week before or the week after they anticipate everyone else will do it. Invariably, all of them had the same idea, and you still have a pile of assignments due at the same time. Anyway, by this time, I’ve experienced so many readings of the poem that it’s become a cherished part of my New Year routine. The poem itself is admittedly quite excellent, and can be feasibly linked to most existing literary themes—hence the wide appeal. I’ve read “The Darkling Thrush” twice this season, and I still find reasons to like and ponder it.

My other New Year’s tradition is perhaps not so unique: the resolution. I’ve actually been on hiatus from making resolutions for the past few years. However, I’m making eco-based ones this year after some inconveniences I experienced while in England.

1.) Fill the sink with water to wash my face. I like to think of myself as someone who consumes a reasonable volume of water. However, in my past life I afforded myself the luxury of washing my face in running water. England changed all that, though, with their strange affinity for the double faucet system. That means that, in order to enjoy a freshly running stream of water, it has to be either freezing cold or scalding hot. I tried the freezing cold thing once and immediately caved. Since getting back to my wonderful, single faucet Japanese system, I’ve realized that there’s really no need for all that water just swirling down the drain—a stunning revelation.

2.) If I’m cold, put on another layer...then keep putting them on until I’m not cold. Does this seem like common sense? Until recently, I refused to wear more than 2 layers at a time out of principle. If I’m forced to wear more clothing than that then it is unreasonably cold and someone else’s responsibility to amend. So I didn’t last long in Japan with that attitude and increased the limit to 3 layers, running my heat constantly and complaining to whoever would listen. Then I went to England where people seem to view heat sources as an object of contempt. It was there that I realized the silliness in expecting the world to just fix itself and conform to my ideas of “inhabitable.” If rabbits have the good sense to don warmer, fluffier fashions during the winter, then surely I should, too. And I should keep on donning them until I’ve reached my body temperature goal.

Me at Stonehenge: left my nice, warm hat in the car and suffering in the freezing cold because of it. I never made that mistake again!

 

 

By Sydney

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