お正月

Oshogastu means New Year. By kanji it means “honorable correct month”. Not quite sure why. The “O” at the front isn’t in kanji but in hiragana and it gives the honorable part. They add this to lots of nouns in Japanese. Honorable water, honorable bath, honorable tea, honorable pot (as in the cooking utensil) are all common. As is most honorable customer. I hear that one a lot. Like over the intercom at the supermarket. “Oh most honorable costumer, just to remind you our humble store will be closing in five minutes.” At first I didn’t even recognize the word because when I learned the vocab for customer I learned it without the honorific. It sounds completely different.

But I digress. This post is about New Year’s in Japan, not the odd bits of the Japanese language, although that could fill several posts by itself. The biggest difference about New Year’s here is that New Year’s is a season, not a day. In America there’s New Year’s Eve and once the clock strikes Midnight, that’s kind of it. My New Year’s began on the 30th with a day of pounding rice. This was lots of fun. The rice is a special variety called mochi. It’s much stickier and slightly sweeter than normal rice. It also keeps for a very long time. My host mother told me that traditional New Year’s foods are ones that have a very long shelf life. This is because everything used to shut down around New Year’s. Nothing was open. Nowadays the convenient stores and hospitals stay open, but it used to be that the whole country came to a standstill for about a week. In earlier times when the traditional foods were created I’m sure it was longer. So you needed to have stuff that would stay edible for a while. Most people buy mochi for New Year’s but my family makes their own. You start by cooking the mochi rice. Then the rice is dumped into a giant wooden bowl about the size of a tree trunk. Then, with a giant wooden mallet the size of an axe, you pound the rice in the bowl until it’s a very thick mush. This takes something like 200 to 300 swings. A bowl (not giant) of water sits by the side for dipping the mallet in. If you don’t keep the mallet wet the mochi sticks to it like Velcro. The result is a very thick rice paste that’s slightly sweet. I’m not raving about the taste but it’s not awful. Edible for sure. Unlike natto, which I had to try again at this house because my host mother didn’t believe I found it repulsive.

The three adults rotated jobs. Pounding rice, wetting the rice in between strikes to keep it from sticking to the bowl, and keeping Momiji away from the giant wooden mallet. Bits of mochi flew everywhere and everyone had incredibly sticky hands by the end. I felt like Spider Man. We did this outside of course. Now, when you do something outside as a family in America, it's done in the yard of patio. The street is off limits. That’s dangerous. Here there’s nowhere else to go. So we pounded away in the street, moving every time a car decided to go by. We finished with what seemed like several thousand pounds of mochi. I’m still eating it in soup for breakfast.

The next New Year’s activity was osoji, honorable cleaning. I cleaned my room so now you can see the floor and washed the windows. This time however, I didn’t need to climb over furniture to reach outside on the second floor and wash them. We all put in an hour and a half cleaning the house, getting it ready for the New Year. The idea is to go into the New Year feeling clean, getting a fresh start. I like the idea. That’s also why we went to the onsen in the afternoon. An onsen is an open air hot water bath. They’re incredibly popular here. I went with my host father. I’ve never seen so many naked men in one place. I stand out even more naked because my whiteness gets to radiate from every part of my body. Wonderful. This is my second time in an onsen and while I liked it I still felt very uncomfortable. It was really crowded. And this is one place that you really do not want to be crowded. After the onsen we returned home to play Blockus. That’s a board game my brother got me for Christmas that has quickly turned into our favorite after-dinner activity. My host parents love it, particularly my father. I’m not sure what Japanese people typically do on New Year’s Eve. I know there are ceremonies at temples because I could hear the bells from my room. We stayed in and turned in early because of Momiji. But I don’t think it's the party holiday that it is the U.S. New Year’s is a family holiday here. You spend lots of time with the family. Christmas is for friends, New Year’s for family. I stayed up past midnight so I could update my status on facebook.

New Year’s Day is the laziest day of the year. I woke up late, skyped for a while, had breakfast, took a long nap, played some hanetsuki, had dinner, and back to bed. Delicious. Hanetsuki actually deserves some description. It's a really fun game. It’s a lot like badminton without a net. We played out in the street (of course) with a court drawn out of chalk. The paddles are wooden and the ball as small wooden bead with feathers. The rules are simple, don’t let it hit your side of the court. There’s no spiking, and outs don't count. The best part of the game is the winner gets to face-paint the loser. By the end of the night everyone has beards, whiskers, horns, or random lines on their face. I’m incredibly excited to import this to America. It’s the best prize I’ve seen, and infinitely adaptable. Our next New Year’s activity was visiting the local temple on the 2nd. My host mother wore a very beautiful silk kimono. The monks were chanting away while I rang the bell. There was a neat presentation of a traditional drum ceremony. Then we went to park to fly kites, another traditional New Year’s activity. Most people use plastic kites but we had a really neat paper and bamboo one. I found out quickly why people use plastic kites. While everyone around us was enjoying the healthy wind with their kites soaring about us, ours refused to do anything but spin and crash into the ground. So we went out, bought a plastic kite, and returned to conquer the wind.

Then on the 3rd, yesterday, we went out to an old Japanese folk village. It’s a fake village but the buildings are real. Like going to an Old West theme town. My mother’s kimono got her in for free. I had a fish stick for snack. That’s a whole fish with a stick jammed through it. Very salty but rather tasty. It was a girl fish. I know because she was filled with delicious eggs. We saw some cool stuff. I made a candle, watched a comedian samurai, and received tea ceremony. All interesting stuff. Then went home, played more hanetsuki, Blockus, and bed. New Year’s has been a very fun, very relaxing time. I’m enjoying being lazy instead of getting horribly homesick. Today was the first day of track which completely through me off my perfect rhythm of sleeping in till 10. School starts on the 8th. Ugh.