Ringing in the New Year in Japan 2010

Things are of course winding down here in at my wife’s house in Japan for the new year. Among many traditions here, you can see people flocking to their local shops and drug stores to redeem coupons for a chance at winning a lottery prize:

Furubiki

This is a pretty typical Japanese style lottery called fukubiki (福引き) among other names. It’s a large wheel you can turn and you win a prize depending on which colored ball comes out. Here, slightly edited for privacy, my little one is posing next to the lottery wheel. She managed to win 1st place twice, so we took home a portable air conditioner and other great prizes! The term in Japanese is 一等賞 or ittōshō (first-place prize), where 等 (tō) is a counter word for “place”. So, second place would be 二等賞 (nitōshō), third prize would be 三等賞 (santōshō) and so on.

Also, to welcome the new year in, many homes in Japan has two hanging pine branches in front too called kadomatsu (門松) which just means “gate” and “pine”. Kadomatsu can often include more elaborate displays too, involving pine and bamboo branches as the Wikipedia article explains.

My daughter’s 4th birthday happens to fall right before New Year’s Eve, so I managed to get to Japan just in time to celebrate with her and the family. As I write this, she had her 4th birthday yesterday and we celebrated at a very nice sushi restaurant. He’s my plate:

Birthday Sushi

And here’s my daughter’s plate:

Birthday Sushi for kids

Unfortunately, the room was hot, and the whole experience was a bit overwhelming so she get really ill and vomited her dinner. The good news was that afterward she felt a lot better and was dancing around and playing. :) It’s easy to forget sometimes what it’s like to be a little kid, and how things can be too much for their little tummies.

Anyway, people in Japan, like many parts of the world, do a big end-of-the-year cleaning of the house. Since Japanese homes are quite small, they are also very dense, so it’s a big chore to clean even a small space, because there’s so much packed in! My wife has been helping her mom clean the house from top to bottom for two days, while I’ve been tasked with keeping our little one busy.

Between the birthday celebration, house cleaning and other traditions, we haven’t had much time to discuss what we’ll do on the night of New Year’s itself! This night is called Ōmisoka (大晦日) by the way. As mentioned in an old post, there’s a big tradition in Japan where people often flock to Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines to ring in the New Year. In Buddhist temples at least, this is a tradition called joya no kané (除夜の鐘). People attend a service at their local Buddhist temple, possibly one of few they’ll attend all year, and then line up to be one of the people to ring the bell 108 times. Ideally, everyone gets a chance to ring it once, so that the total becomes 108, which is an important number in Buddhism. These represent the various defilements of the mind, or forms of ignorance, that a disciple is to overcome before attaining full awakening.

The sound of that bell I heard at the end of 2008 still stays with me, along with the bitter-sweet realization it gave me that all things must fade including good food, hot girls, etc. As I reflect on this it also reminds me of the opening passage from the ancient epic The Tales of the Heike, which describes the legendary Bells of Gion: the legendary bell at Anathapindika’s Monastery in the Jeta Grove where the Buddha and his disciples frequented. That in turn also reminds me of this excellent comic from Sinfest which I highly recommend.

Unfortunately I can’t speak to the Shinto version of the New Year’s eve ceremony, since I have no experience, but I’ll do my best to gather info if I can. To be honest, with so much going on right now, I have no idea where we might go to ring the New Year’s Eve bell, so that will have to wait for another post. :)

Of course, if standing out in the cold isn’t your thing, you can stay home and enjoy lots of musical competitions: Enka music specials for the older generation (except for Jero who’s a cool guy and great singer) or Red vs. White for the younger crowd. I enjoy watching both, but they can drag out for hours, and most of the music isn’t that great. Frankly, some of the Pop groups in Red vs. White are just eye candy if you ask me. ;)

So, here’s to the end of 2010 and to the new year!

Update: Little one threw up again this morning. We are pretty she has the flu afterall. It helps to know the difference.


One Comment on “Ringing in the New Year in Japan 2010”

  1. johnl says:

    That sushi looks pretty yummy! The discussion of vomiting
    right below the pix creates an interesting tension between
    attraction and revulsion! :-) By the way, I went to the temple
    Enyuji to participate in Joya no Kane for the first time in my 30+
    years in Japan. Quite an experience. That temple is not especially
    big or famous, so the crowd was not so big, and was mostly people
    from the neighborhood. Quiet enough for some contemplation, but
    chilly enough that I went home well before the bell-ringing ended.
    But it was a nice chance to do the New Year’s ‘go aisatsu’ to the
    priest who has been teaching the meditation classes.


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