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Japanese New Year: People
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The Japanese have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcard s (年賀状, nengajŠ) to their friends and relatives. It is similar to the Europe an custom of sending Christmas cards. Instead of sending Christmas cards, Japanese people send these postcards so that they arrive on the 1st of January. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards on the first of January if they are marked with the words nengajo and are posted within a time limit, from mid-December to near the end of the month. In order to send these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part-time to help deliver the letters. The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times for the Japanese post office .
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For many Japanese, the celebration of the New Year is one of the most important events on the calendar. Oshogatsu (New Year) is a joyful, dignified, and serious event that lasts many days. The end of the year is a fresh start and a time for purification, and most people begin the celebration at the end of December with a thorough cleaning of the house, repairing or replacing things worn or broken. Special decorations and foods are set out, and by January 7th the festivities come to an end. the one underlying emphasis is on kotohajime (first acts of the New Year). The first meal of the New Year, the first sunrise, the first performance, etc., are all considered significant events that mark a fresh beginning.
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Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called osechi-ryōri, typically shortened to osechi. A popular soup is ozōni, consisting of miso, boiled kelp (konbumaki), fish cakes (kamaboko), mashed sweet potato with chestnut (kurikinton), simmered burdock root (kinpira gobo), and sweetened black soybeans (kuromame). Many of these dishes are sweet, sour, or dried, so they can keep without refrigeration — the culinary traditions date to a time before households had refrigerators, when most stores closed for the holidays. There are many variations of osechi, and some foods eaten in one region are not eaten in other places (or are even banned) on New Year's Day. Today, sashimi and sushi are often eaten, as well as non-Japanese foods. To let the overworked stomach rest, seven-herb rice soup (nanakusa-gayu) is prepared on the seventh day of January, a day known as jinjitsu (jinjitsu).
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Preparation for the New Year begins during the middle of December, with people preparing New Year's postcards usually purchased from the Japanese Postal Service known as nengajo. These cards are sent to business clients and aquaintances, friends, and family members. Those destined for businesses are usually printed commercially at a print shop while those sent to family and friends tend to be handmade. For people with large mailing lists, though, the trend is to have all the cards prepared commercially.
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New Year observances are the most important and elaborate of Japan's annual events. Before the New Year, homes are cleaned, debts are paid off, and osechi (food in lacquered trays for the New Year) is prepared or bought. Homes are decorated and the holidays are celebrated by family gatherings, visits to temples or shrines, and formal calls on relatives and friends. The first day of the year (ganjitsu) is usually spent with members of the family. People ... visit Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.
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The Japanese clean their homes, businesses, and temples extensively prior to New Year’s Eve. Cleaning the Buddhist shrines and pictures within the temples is a significant event that is often televised. The importance of cleanliness in Japan is largely related to the importance of cleanliness in the Buddhist religion. At the start of the Japanese New Year people visit Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and pray for happiness and prosperity in the coming year. At the Buddhist temples the bells are chimed 108 times at midnight. This number signifies the 108 Buddhist sins.
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