Japan’s year-end and New Year season has all sorts of customs that have continued since long ago.
First, at the end of December, many households do a thorough house cleaning.
The purpose is to clear away a year’s worth of dirt and greet the new year feeling refreshed.
On New Year’s Eve there is a custom of eating toshikoshi soba, the year-crossing noodles.
It is said to carry the wish that one may live long and slender like the noodles.
As midnight approaches, temples ring the New Year’s bell 108 times.
This is said to be in order to dispel the 108 worldly desires that lie in the human heart.
Once the new year begins, many people go to shrines and temples to pray.
This is called hatsumode, and people pray for health and happiness in the coming year.
Famous shrines get packed with crowds, and sometimes you have to stand in line for hours.
At New Year’s, people eat a special cuisine called osechi ryori.
Each dish — black beans, shrimp, fish cake and so on — has its own meaning; shrimp, for instance, expresses the wish to live so long that one’s back becomes bent.
For children, the thing they look forward to most is surely the otoshidama, the New Year’s money.
Since they get little envelopes with money inside from their parents and relatives, many children must be eagerly awaiting this day.
There is also the custom of exchanging nengajo, postcards bearing New Year’s greetings, though lately more and more people simply do it by email or smartphone.
These days more families travel abroad over the New Year, and the old ways of spending the holidays seem to be gradually changing, but the feeling of gathering as a family to celebrate the new year probably will not change.
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