Welcome to the Xmas and New Year Special Edition

As most of you will be aware, there aren’t many Christians in Japan, so Xmas here has very little to do with religion here. What it does have a lot to do with is decorations, presents, cards, food and fun. So, yes, it is celebrated here mainly in a commercial way and with friends. Xmas day is not a public holiday.

The decorations not only include upside down snowmen, but also reindeer, Santa-san, trees and lots of lights. A lot of effort is put into decorating areas with lights – lots and lots of fairy lights and other lighting effects. It is called “irumineshon” (long e). People go out in their thousands to see the irumineshon. I personally didn’t go out because it would have involved me travelling around by myself at night. So, unfortunately I didn’t see any of it this time. I plan to do this for Xmas later this year. The photos below are examples of the kind of lighting they do.

Retailers push the sales of gifts and cards, just as they do in Australia and elsewhere. The biggest difference lies in the food. The Japanese love cake and desserts just as much as anyone else, and they have a specific cake for Xmas but it is a sponge cake decorated mainly with strawberries and cream, ie red and white. For Xmas I bought a matcha (green tea) sponge cake wedge (yes, not the whole cake!) with cream and a little strawberry conserve decoration. This is mainly because I love matcha cakes and desserts and I thought that green was suitable for Xmas. Also, I am not a huge fan of vanilla sponge cake.

The other food many Japanese eat at Xmas is fried chicken, with the big winner here being KFC. Apparently it started in the 70s when KFC had a big advertising campaign about eating KFC for Xmas. Obviously it was a stunning success for them and they make up special buckets, etc just for Xmas every year. I made mushroom pasta for my dinner, which is completely different to anything I would normally have for xmas, but it involved some slightly more expensive items such as Blue Castello, and I had to find wheat flour and cream, which I did. It was very nice (even if I do say so myself) and I had it with some French bubbles (of course).

Once Xmas is over, and I mean immediately, the decorations come down. Then up go decorations for new year. This involves not only retail areas, but also private dwellings where many people put up special New Year decorations. I put one up as well (see photo below). The decorations are for protection, to ward off bad spirits, and for good luck for the coming year.

Interestingly, there has been much made of it being the end of the year of the monkey and the upcoming year of the rooster. As you can see, my decoration has a little chook on it. It seems that New Year in terms of the lunar calendar festivities is celebrated as much on 1 January as it is at actual lunar new year here. The changeover to using the Gregorian calendar happened in Japan in the 1800s, so the date of new year was changed to 1 January at that time along with the celebration.

New Year is a much more important celebration than Xmas, and tends to be the time family gets together to celebrate. It is about the death or passing of the old year and the birth of the new year. This is all intertwined with both Buddhist (relating to death and passing) and Shinto (relating to life and the future) aspects.

Again I celebrated with French bubbles…

On the night, I set my alarm to wake me at 11:45 so I could hear the temple bells being rung. I know, I know, but as most of you who know me will realise I am hopeless at staying awake late. Also, I hadn’t decided if I would go outside to listen or just stay in the warmth! Anyway, the alarm went off and already I could hear the bell at the local temple being rung. It is a VERY large bell, larger than most you see at temples, hence quite loud. So, with my interest piqued I decided to get up, put my puffy jacket on, tidy my hair and go downstairs.

Surprisingly it wasn’t as cold as I expected – my hands didn’t immediately feel painful! The local shrine and temple are at one place nearby, less than 10 minutes walk from the flat. It is a Toyokuni shrine, to commemorate Toyotomi Hideyoshi (predecessor of the Tokugawa shogunate, who lived in the 1500s). As I’m standing outside I notice lots of people heading up towards the shrine, so, on an impulse, I decide to go up too. It just seemed right and I felt quite safe.

There were many people at the shrine and temple, with a very large queue leading to the bell because they were allowing the people to ring the bell. The bell (see photo above) has a very large pole held vertically on chains and rope which is used to strike the bell. For this bell, the striker is the size of a tree – although it doesn’t look like that in the photo. Remember the striker is at least at shoulder height when you strike the bell. I doubt I could have swung it enough to make much noise. There were groups going up to ring it together. It was quite lovely, actually. Just after I got there, the crowd applauded, not because I was there and in my jammies, but for midnight. There was no yelling, no fireworks, just applause.

I stayed a little longer then left and passed the massive queue lining up to go into the shrine itself to say their greetings to Kami and to pick up some items, including their fortune for the year. I decided against lining up, in part because I was in my jammies and in part because I hadn’t brought any money to offer Kami.

On Monday I did go back, hoping the crowds wouldn’t be so large, to pay my respects to Kami and ask for a good year. There was a queue but it was much smaller and I was actually dressed appropriately!

Unfortunately there was no snow on either Xmas day or for New Year, however, there was some snow on the 28^th. There wasn’t much and it rained a bit as well – at the same time. So both were falling together. I hadn’t seen or heard of that before, so something new for me. It was very exciting when I saw the snow falling outside my window that morning! Nothing since…

The final photo below is one Craig sent me which shows that they do indeed have fireworks for New Year in some places in Japan.

Cheers for now…