The year of the Rabbit, 2011, arrived in Nagoya with our first floury of snow. Before New Year, thousands of people crammed our local streets to get to the nearby, Heiwa Park Cemetery. By January 1, all the individual graves were adorned with posies of pine branches and flowers. Every single grave had been visited by their family. Tradition is an enormous part of Japanese life. No wonder this place is so crowded all the time. I actually think the Japanese like being surrounded by others. It is just what you do here, tradition, tradition, tradition. Get in the car and sit in a traffic jam. Go to where everyone else is going. Queue in an orderly fashion to take a peak at a special Buddha, maybe rub his shoulder for good luck. During autumn like everyone else, we got in the car, drove to the nearby prefecture of Gifu to look at the Autumn leaves. Are we becoming Japanese? We spent weekend after weekend in ridiculously slow going traffic jams. Was there an accident? No, just everyone in Japan driving around trying to get back home, merging traffic, slowing and stopping. At least we can watch the TV in our car when we stop:)
All the workplaces build up to new year with "Forget the Year" celebrations. Every man, (women stay at home and clean, wash and cook meals - another tradition) has a number of evening events to attend. Before New Year there is a scurry of emptying out unwanted goods, many of them perfectly functional. Every house and workplace is decorated with pine and twine decorations. We think about doing it too, but are cautioned that all decorations must be removed by January 10th and burned or some awful bad luck might happen. OK, the pressure, what if we forget to take it off the door? How will we burn it?
New Years Eve (unlike Australian culture) is a reflective evening, a time to be with your close family. At midnight, families visit their Shinto Shrine or Buddist Temple to ring the bell, 108 times I think it was, all for good luck. Before dawn, they wake back up again to greet the New Year. It is a tradition to climb to the peak of a mountain to see the first sunrise of the New Year. We joined our friends to climb such a mountain. The sun rose at 7am.We climbed to the top, stood and waited to see the sunrise. It was pretty unremarkable, a little cloudy, but again we were not alone, at least 200 people stood with us and hoped for a spectacular visual event. We cooked Omachi with the locals in the fire. Omachi is a rice cake that is as hard as a rock until it is roasted. It is a tradition to do this too. Careful though, 1000 people choke on Omachi every year.
Happy New Year!!
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