01: New Year's Day ( January 1st )
In ancient times the Japanese New Year (正月 shogatsu, or お正月 o-shogatsu) was based on the Chinese calendar and celebrated at the beginning of spring. However, in 1873 Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar and January 1st became the official Japanese New Year’s Day.
The Japanese New Year is the most important festival of the year. Most businesses are closed from the end of December through January 3rd. Preparations for the holiday actually begin at the end of the previous year, as people traditionally clean their houses in order welcome the New Year and the new beginning it signifies in a fresh, clean state. This special cleaning is called o-souji (大掃除). Generally everyone from students to salarymen will spend their last day before the New Year's break cleaning their schools or offices.
After cleaning house all day, many families celebrate December 31st, or Omisoka (大晦日), with a bowl of long toshikoshi-soba (年越しそば) noodles. Eating the long noodles supposedly has a connection to enjoying a long, rich life. Even in present-day Japan it is considered bad luck for the next year not to finish all your toshikoshi-soba. The night of New Year's Eve, called joya （除夜） is often marked by a trip to a Buddhist temple. Just before midnight, people gather at temples to hear the tolling of a large bell, rung 108 times: once for every human desire. The low tolling of these bells can be heard throughout the country, welcoming the New Year.
The morning of January 1st is called gantan (元旦), and the kanji character used in the word looks like the sun rising over the horizon. New Year’s Day is also filled with all kinds of traditions. In most families a special type of food, called osechi-ryori (お節料理) is eaten. Many of the dishes are sweet or sour, and are served in special boxes. This is because the food needed to keep over the 3-day holiday period, since traditionally cooking was not allowed during this time.
Eating rice cakes, or mochi (餅）, made at the end of the year is also a Japanese New Year’s tradition. Although it can be bought at the store or made with a machine, many people still make mochi the old-fashioned way for o-shogatsu. Special mochigome (もち米) rice is boiled and put into a shallow bucket-like container made of wood or stone. Then it is patted with water by one person while another person hits it with a large wooden hammer. By mashing the rice, it gets sticky and forms a sticky white dumpling, which can be pressed and cut into flat cakes or filled with bean paste to make a sweet treat. Mochi is also made into a New Year's decoration called kagami mochi (鏡餅), formed from two round cakes of mochi with a daidai (bitter orange) placed on top.
Another important custom is sending New Year’s Postcards (年賀状, nengajo) to friends and family. Instead of sending Christmas cards, like in Western countries, Japanese send New Year’s Cards that are guaranteed to arrive on the 1st of January by the Japanese postal service. The purpose of the cards is to let friends and family, whom you don’t often meet, know that you are doing well. Many nengajo feature drawings or pictures of an animal, according to the year of the Chinese Zodiac.
New Year’s Day is also a fun day for children, who receive a small decorated envelope that contains a certain amount of money called an otoshidama (お年玉). Normally the amount of money depends on the age of the child, but often the same amount is given, if there are more than one child in the family.
Hatsumode (初詣) is the first visit to a shrine or temple during the new year. Major temples and shrines are very popular and can be very crowded; in 2006 over 3 million people visited the Meiji-jingu shrine in Tokyo for hatsumode. People pray for continued health and safety, and often buy protective good-luck charms (お守り omamori ), and return the ones they bought the previous year. At Shinto shrines, many people write their prayers and wishes on wooden placards called ema (絵馬), or pull strips of paper called omikuji (おみくじ) from a large box which have a prediction of one's fortune for the new year written on them. The omikuji predict how your luck will run in various aspects of life. If you pull a good omikuji fortune, you should keep the strip of paper. However, a bad fortune is usually tied or pinned to a tree, with the hope that the bad luck will be left behind.
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