New Year's in Japan.

I was in Japan for a short while sometime last December. I was there to visit Kenji’s family and friends and experience the Japanese way of celebrating New Year’s for my very first time ever. Things went well for me fortunately. And Japan was good as always. The weather during that time that I was there was sunny despite the cold winters, and New Year’s in the country was more than just an annual celebration - it was exhilarating! Anyhow the following is an account of my experience spending my first day of the year there so feel free to read on...

It was 31st December when Kenji and I made our way to Aichi (where Kenji’s parents live in). We were then from Takayama where we had our first ever vacation in the snowy mountains of Hida. It took us about 3 hours altogether to reach Kenji’s parents’ place from Takayama apparently. And although it wasn’t the longest journey we’ve ever experienced, it was super tiring somehow. Recalling those moments now I thought I must say that Kenji and I must have been very lucky to have plenty of time to rest after arriving in Aichi. Cos the year-end activities that we participated later on were back to back, and so, despite being led all the way into the New Year, a single rest in between seemed somewhat impossible for any one of us!

Anyhow on the day that we arrived in Aichi however, everyone in the Kimura family also came around. So we had Kenji’s brother, Aniki and Aniki’s wife, Mari-san, too, in the house. That evening, we caught up with as many people as we could and had an extensive family reunion dinner later on. After dinner however, Aniki, Mari-san and Kenji’s father, Teruhisa-san, left to pay some respect at the Kimura grave. Well, I don’t really know if this is a part of the Kimura family’s ritual tho, but Kenji, his grandma and his mum didn’t seem to be bothered about it. So together with them, I hung around at home, watched a bit of TV (we watched the tediously long Red and White Song Festival [Kohaku uta gassen]), ate a bit more of food and waited for midnight to arrive.

At midnight, the temple bell rang. I was in the bedroom getting ready to make my way to the temple with the others when I heard voices of little children walking past the house. At midnight?? Yes, at midnight! And the children sounded ever more excited than anyone else I knew (which made me just as excited to be out to see and be with them!). Outside however, the weather was icy cold and I remember feeling quite tempted to get back indoors, but I didn’t, as going to the temple on New Year’s Eve was an opportunity I knew I wouldn’t want to miss! And so off I went with the others to Temple Renggeji.

The walk to Renggeji wasn’t too long at all actually – it took us less than 10 minutes to get there in fact. On our way there, I saw many local people with their families walking around. Some families were walking towards the temple I was going to whilst others seemed to have returned from it. At the temple though, I saw several teenagers (mainly guys) and a few old men hanging around the garden, some other people however were surrounding a cook. And then there was a group of people waiting patiently in a queue. Curious, I decided to join the people in the queue instead, and the queue actually led me to the second floor of the temple’s main gate.

Well you may be wondering what’s on at the second floor of the temple’s main gate. On the second floor was actually an area where the temple bell was placed. And apparently every visitor of the temple during the New Year’s was allowed to ring the temple bell. So Kenji and I took the opportunity to ring the temple bell once each, after which we went back down (to the first floor) and left the temple for a nearby shrine.

Well, just in case you might want to know, bells were actually rung 108 times during the New Year’s in Japan– eight times in the old year and one hundred times in the new, and it was said that the number 108 was to purify attendees of the 108 delusions that inhabit human beings. Well, I’m not too sure actually how many Japanese people still have faith in this. Cos when I asked around, I found out that a majority of Japanese people of my age group didn’t know anymore, much less care about, the significance of temple bell ringing. It was certainly strange but understandable, I guess.

The next morning Kenji and I woke up to a nice weather. We got ready as soon as possible and left home for some customary house visits. Similar to the house visits I would do back at home in Singapore, Kenji and I visited Kenji’s high school mates at their homes in Aichi. It was a good thing they stayed not too far away from each other so we didn’t have to travel much. Even then we needed to be driven, and thanks to Nomu for driving us around that day :-)

On the second day of New Year however, celebrations seemed to have died down a little. Many people were still on holiday but the towns seemed quieter somehow. That day, Kenji and I caught up with one more of Kenji’s high school mates, Kinya, and left for Nagoya city to see the Nagoya Castle. Later that evening though we went shopping and got ourselves a lucky/happy bag each.

New Year’s in Japan was unique no doubt. There was the entertainment on TV, the temple and shrine visits at midnight, and the lucky/happy bags from shopping sales. Different from the New Year celebrations I have seen in cities like Singapore and Sydney, I must say that New Year’s in Japan was largely based on tradition; a tradition that seemed to have existed for years! And I was pretty surprised actually to see Japan commemorating New Year’s in such manner. But I enjoyed myself to the max nevertheless!


Other features of New Year’s in Japan that I encountered but that I did not include in this post: -

- feeding on mandarin oranges
- seeing keiko-san and teruhisa-san receiving lots of postcards from their clients and colleagues greeting them on the New Year’s