Japanese New Year: a review

Today is Day 3 of Japanese New year, which is usually called oshōgatsu (お正月) or more formerly gantan-e (元旦会). The latter is especially true in Buddhist services, but also on calendars and such. Recently I wrote about Japanese New Year’s Eve, but that is only the first part of New Year. Back home, New Year’s consists of a night of drinking, partying and that’s about it. Here New year is quite a big affair, as I have come to realize.

On our first morning of 2009, we were treated to a nice breakfast with osechi-ryōri (お節料理), which is a bunch of traditional Japanese food in nice bento boxes. There was a lot of food I couldn’t eat, but my in-laws actually did order a “western-food” style osechi box with had some nice cheeses and other familiar foods.

Normally, Japanese make a visit to a Shinto shrine and/or Buddhist temple during the first three days of the year. This is called hatsumōde (初詣). Due to jet lag, we missed the first day’s service at a nearby Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple that is friends with my wife’s family, but we still stopped by to say hi. I visited that temple years ago, before I really understood Buddhism, so it was interesting to talk about Buddhism now that I understood it a little better, and could speak Japanese a little better too. Being a Jodo Shinshu temple it was both familiar, and interesting to see the differences from US temples. Also it reminded me what attracted me to Jodo Shinshu in the first place when I understood little about Japanese Buddhism compared to some temples I saw elsewhere. For their part they were happy to talk with an American about Jodo Shinshu.

Yesterday, we went to visit the famous Shingon Buddhist temple of Kawasaki Daishi which is not too far where my wife’s family lives. People warned me that all temples in Japan would be very busy, but I was unprepared for how busy Kawasaki Daishi was. The road to Kawasaki Daishi was filled with food stands, souvenir stands, etc. It reminded me of my experience last time in Japan at Sensoji, only the road was even longer, but only one lane, not two. Halfway along, I saw a tiny Shinto shrine to my left, so I decided to pay my respects even though Shinto has no particular interest for me. To pay respects you do the following:

1. Toss a coin into the wooden grill-box, the osaisen-bako (お賽銭箱).
2. Pull the rope that’s hanging down side to side to ring the bell.
3. Clap twice and bow your head.

Being the idiot foreigner I am, I screwed up these simple steps. First, I threw the coin wrong, so it hit the grill itself and bounced off somewhere in the shrine. Second, I yanked straight down on the bell’s rope pretty hard, so my wife worried I might pull off the bell. Lesson learned.

Due to the sheer number of visitors, they had to block off the main entrance and people were crammed in a huge queue around the block, while Japanese Christians stood at certain points along the road proselytizing over loudspeakers.*

By the time I got to the temple, there were so many people that we couldn’t easily reach the main altar area, which was fenced off anyways, except for the offering boxes. The crowds kept shoving past one another, almost knocking some people over. I stood at the very, very right and just bought a candle (¥100 / candle) as an offering. Much easier that way.

After the trip, we enjoyed some excellent soba in the shop just outside the temple (off to the immediate right), and Baby enjoyed some vanilla ice cream. It was a nice end to an exciting New Year’s in Japan.

Suffice to say though, I won’t do that again. I’ll be more careful to go during off-times.

For some reason this time I have been a lot less urgent about visiting Japanese Buddhist temples, not because I don’t enjoy it. I love visiting temples anywhere, but somehow I know this time that I won’t have some great awakening or anything. Somehow, I’ve finally figured out that peace comes from within, not from external religious symbolism.

Of course, I somehow feel like a hypocrit for saying this, because I did get a nice rosary from the local Jodo Shinshu temple near our house. It was made from an old tree that used to be on the grounds.

As for today, the third day of New Year, more stores were open, so we caught up on some errands, met some good friends of my wife’s, and enjoyed some nice diner food near our house. The weather has suddenly become much colder but the days are no less sunny than before. Tomorrow I go to Tochigi Prefecture in the north to see some of my wife’s extended family. Tochigi Prefecture isn’t that far north, but in the past, I found the Japanese hard to understand. The words were the same, but the tones were somehow different and threw me off. But I like visiting, them and they’re always good to us.

Last time, they took us on a tour of a really nice local Tendai temple called Oyaji (大谷時) which was built into the limestone caves outside of Utsunomiya City.** The back of the altar room was a wall-carved image Kannon Bodhisattva. Here’s a small picture I took last time that I uploaded into Wikimedia:

The temple also had a museum featuring neolithic relics from the area as well.

See you soon!

Namuamidabu

P.S. Just to round things out, I hope to take up my father-in-law’s invitation to see a certain Nichiren temple in our neighborhood. Since I’ve never been to a Nichiren temple, it will be an interesting experience if we have time. Already, family members across east Japan are lining up times to see Baby again.

* – Talk about a captive audience. I was just surprised to see Christians in Japan, considering their numbers are so small, though now it’s kind of exotic and cool among Japanese youth. People get married in fake chapels and such.

** – The other thing famous about Utsunomiya: its potstickers. They really are that good.