When we think of winter holidays for Japan, Christmas and New Years are the two that pop into our minds. While we love celebrating Christmas in Japan, the long New Year’s holiday is not only the biggest holiday of the season; it’s the biggest of the year! Today, we’re doing a deep dive into Japanese New Year!
Read on to learn more about the parties, activities, traditions and food that brings families (and friends) together in the winter season!
Bonenkai Parties
A bonenkai is a party that happens before the end of the year, usually for companies, friend groups and activity circles. They are not to be confused with the Western New Year’s parties though. These parties happen in the month of December, usually before New Year’s Eve, and are used to say goodbye to the old year instead of welcoming the new year.
In fact, the bonen in bonenkai implies that people are forgetting the past year in this fun celebration. And you may rest assured that these parties have lots of food and drinks that make it easy to forget the last year. Just be careful since some people end up going hard with the partying with multiple bonenkai, both voluntary and mandatory.
Decorations
You can also get into the New Year’s spirit with a few traditional Japanese decorations, varying from small and simple to large and intricate. The most famous is kagami-mochi, or mirror rice cake. Kagami-mochi consists of one smaller mochi on top of a larger mochi and is displayed in the home from late December to January 11th.
It is also often topped with a whole mikan orange (or a plastic version). While the mochi and mikan have their own meanings, the primary purpose of kagami mochi is to make an offering to the Toshigami, the god of the New Year.
Another popular decoration for the season is shime-kazari, a paper decoration that wards off misfortune while also welcoming the Toshigami. You may also see a decoration called kadomatsu, which is a set of larger red pine and bamboo decorations, in front of houses and businesses. Kadomatsu welcome good luck and fortune by welcoming the Toshigami.
Watch TV
TV is always a fun part of New Year’s around the world. While many Americans enjoy watching the ball drop in New York, Japan opts to watch different countdowns. The biggest New Year’s event is the Kohaku Uta Gassen, a competition-style program that brings Japan’s top artists together to compete in teams.
The teams are separated between women (Team Red) and men (Team White), and while each team is trying to win, most artists regard just being on the show as a highlight of their career.
This year is the 75th anniversary of this music event and features quite the lineup, including TWICE, Hoshino Gen, Glay, Vaundy and Mrs. GREEN APPLE!
You can also enjoy other programs, including comedy programs with a ‘try not to laugh’ challenge, music shows without the competition aspect and variety shows featuring top celebrities, athletes and more!
Eat
Good food is a part of any big celebration, and Japanese O-Shogatsu is no exception with all of the menu items that center around the holiday!
Toshikoshi Soba
One of the first foods of the New Year’s season is toshikoshi soba, a dish of soba often topped with vegetables, tempura or kakiage (a fried ball of veggies). Toshikoshi soba is eaten before midnight on New Year’s Eve and never after. This is because the soba generally represents two things.
The first is a long life as soba noodles tend to be quite long themselves. The second (and most important) is that they represent cutting off the bad luck of the last year. You see—soba noodles are softer than ramen or udon noodles, making them easy to bite off mid-slurp. So these easy to cut noodles are affiliated with cutting off bad luck, so do it before midnight!
Mochi
Mochi is a big part of the Japanese New Year season and pops up in various forms. Like we mentioned before, it first comes in the form of kagami mochi, the decoration. However, once Toshigami brings you good luck during the New Year, the mochi itself becomes lucky. Eating the mochi will grant you a bit of extra luck. This mochi is generally eaten on the 11th.
Families also enjoy making their own mochi from late December to early January via rice pounding, or mochitsuki. Mochitsuki involves taking steamed glutinous rice and pounding away at it with a wooden mallet. It’s a fun activity for all involved and is rewarded with a sweet New Year’s treat after.
Mochi also makes an appearance in other New Year’s dishes, such as…
Ozoni
Ozoni, or o-zoni (or just zoni), is a traditional soup containing mochi! It usually has a variety of ingredients boiled together and can have a variety of stocks, such as dashi (Japanese bonito and/or kelp stock), white miso, red miso and more. The mochi is usually grilled and then boiled in the soup with ingredients like tofu, meat and vegetables.
It’s hard to fully describe O-zoni because this soup differs from family-to-family! While some regions have general unique traits (like the dashi broth of Kanto versus the white miso of Kansai), the real recipes and ingredients come down to each family’s individual tastes and traditions.
Oshiruko
Oshikuro is another traditional Japanese soup enjoyed during the O-Shogatsu season, but it’s more of a dessert soup. It’s made with anko, a sweet Japanese red bean paste, and mochi dumplings. It often includes the crushed red beans in the soup as well as candied chestnuts so there’s plenty of natural sweetness to it without being overly sweet.
Osechi Ryori
One of the things about the Japanese New Year season is that many places close so people can be with family. This means that families often have to prepare food as restaurants (and even many supermarkets) will be closed. That’s where Osechi comes in.
Osechi Ryori (or Osechi) is a multi-tiered boxed meal of various traditional Japanese foods. These foods are cooked beforehand so all you have to do is open them up and enjoy. They usually stand three boxes tall and can be eaten over the holiday.
Each food included in the boxes represents something in name, shape or tradition. For example, kelp (konbu) represents joy while sea bream welcomes good luck and celebration. However, recently, more casual Osechi has become a thing and doesn’t include the fancier foods, making it more affordable.
Otoso and Amazake
No celebration is complete without a good drink—alcohol or no. For New Year’s, Japanese sake is the representative. First up is O-toso or just toso, a medicinal spiced sake combining medicinal herbs and sake or mirin for a sweet yet spicy drink.
This sake is tossed back during New Year festivities to get rid of any sickness from the last year and welcome good health in the new year.
Next up is amazake, a sweet sake made using fermented rice. This sake is enjoyed year-round but is particularly featured in Japanese New Year and Hinamatsuri (Girl’s Day). Many shrines and temples serve or sell hot amazake to people during some of the activities that happen there.
Games
Of course, just sitting with your family can get a little boring, but Japan has a solution. Japanese folks enjoy quite a few different games during the New Year holiday. Kite flying, cards and board games are popular choices, but more traditional choices are also an option.
Hanetuki
Hanetsuki is a game similar to badminton, but it has no net and replaces the racquet with wooden paddles. Plus, the shuttlecock is more colorful than a badminton one, and the paddles are often decorated with various designs.
You can bounce the shuttlecock on your paddle when playing alone or play with a friend and bounce it back and forth as long as you can. Supposedly, the longer you can keep the shuttlecock in the air, solo or with a friend, the more protection you get from mosquitoes for the year.
Karuta
If paddle badminton isn’t your thing, then you can break out the cards and play karuta, also known as Hyakunin Isshu Karuta. Karuta tends to involve spreading cards face-up and touching whatever card the game master says. The card goes to the fastest person.
However, the New Year’s version combines traditional Japanese poetry, or waka, with the game concept. The Hyakunin Isshu is a collection of 100 poems by 100 different poets. This version requires a special deck with pictures and the second half of each poem on them.
The game master reads the poems, and the players go for the corresponding card based on either the picture or their knowledge of poetry. Many schools will have their students learn these poems and do a school-wide karuta competition in January!
New Years Cards
Christmas cards are a big thing in the West, but Japan goes all in on the New Year’s Cards, or nengajo. Nengajo are just a way to wish others a ‘Happy New Year’ and for kind treatment in the future. However, Japan takes these super seriously and some families will send tons of them to coworkers, business partners, family members, friends and more, making it something people prepare way in advance.
The Season of Firsts
One of the interesting things about Japan is the handful of firsts that Japanese folks embrace at the beginning of the year. For those who love beautiful scenery, the first sunrise is a great tradition that many people wake up (or stay up) to see.
For those who are a bit more cerebral, you can look forward to your first dream of the year. If you dream of a hawk, an eggplant or Mount Fuji, you’re going to have a great year!
Hatsumode
The biggest first that almost everyone participates in is called hatsumode, or first prayer of the year. This involves going to a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple to pray for good fortune for the rest of the year. The first three days of the year are the best time to go, but the actual deadline is January 31st. Some people even go after just after midnight on New Year’s Day.
It can also matter which shrine or temple you go to as some have specialties like love, academic success or money. This is also a chance to get your fortune for the year. Fortunes tend to vary from great blessings to bad fortune. However, some go more in depth, talking about your fortune for different areas of life like romance and career opportunities.
If you don’t want to claim your fortune, you can basically get rid of that fortune by tying it to a tree or rope provided by the temple or shrine. However, you may want to buy a charm from the monks for added protection at a small fee.
Shopping & Lucky Bags
While shopping is great any time of year, some of the best deals Japan has happen just before New Year’s and right after the shops open again. The highlight of this shopping season is the illustrious Lucky Bag, or fukubukuro.
Tons of shops put together a mystery bag of items at a fraction of the price that you’d pay for the items separately. These lucky bags are extremely popular, so most brands actually require reservations for one. However, outlet shops do first come first served lucky bags as well.
Now you know all about Japan’s biggest holiday! With food galore, fun activities and plenty of tradition, Japanese New Year stands out as a great holiday that we hope you can enjoy both in Japan and abroad!
