New Year in Japan

Hi Everyone,


Sorry for keeping you waiting. I got an infected e-mail last week, that didn't seem suspicious at all, and I opened it. The past 4 days I've been closing e-mail accounts, creating new ones, saving contact information, and cleaning out my laptop. I thought it would never end, but with the help of an IT pro friend, I finally finished, so I'm back. Here is the promised post about Japanese New Year.


In Japan, as I might have said before, Christmas is party and dating time, while New Year's or, as they say in Japanese, Oshoogatsu, is more like a family get together. So, I went to visit my boyfriends family. It's not the first time I went there, but we were careful not to meet his relatives, other than close family. The thing is, in Japan, if you take your girlfriend or boyfriend home to meet your parents, it means you are to be engaged. Well, we aren't, and his close family knows it, his relatives, I doubt. So if I would meet them, he would introduce me to them, and they would start congratulating...it would be very awkward. It actually happened two years ago once...by some kind of aunt or something. We were just standing there in an awkward silence...

New Year's Eve dinner

Anyway, we had a nice dinner together on New Year's Eve, eating o-sechi (New Year's food).  I believe o-sechi may vary depending on the family members' preferences, but one common food is black beans and of course different kinds of seafood. I can't eat sea food, so I just ate soba, a kind of noodle. Toshi-koshi soba, is what they call the soba they eat either at New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day.  It is regular soba, only the name is special. I heard they eat it, because noodles are long, so it is a symbol of long life. If you eat toshi-koshi soba, you'll have a long life.



After dinner, around midnight, we went to a temple, and they rang the small bell there, clapped their hands and prayed. Then, they also pulled this huge thick stick like thing that hit a really huge bell. They said every temple that bell is supposed to ring 108 times, as according to Buddhism, people have 108 earthly desires, or something like that. My dear Japanese Readers, please don't hesitate to correct me, if I'm wrong.
Next day, on January 1st, we went to shrine for our hatsumode-first visit of the year. We had some fortune telling and stuff. Even though it was quite countryside compared to downtown Osaka, hundreds of people queued to ring the bell and pray, so we just skipped that. Instead we took a walk at the beach, it was pretty cold. We spent the rest of the day pretty much staying at home, eating all day.



The big bell thing.

On the 2nd shopping malls opened, we went around, and did a bit of shopping because everything was so cheap: New Year's bargain!!! Again, I love the countryside, there weren't too many people. My friends who went shopping in Osaka said it was unbelievable. People were lining up before opening time at the gates of the mall. When they finally got in, they were pushing and stomping each other, fighting like vultures to get the good stuff. Many stores sell so called fuku-bukuro, which is like to buy a pig in a poke. The direct translation would sound like "lucky bag", these are big shopping bags, that are sealed. They are sold for a certain price, but usually the products in it are more expensive. That's why many people buy them. Depending on the shop, in some cases you can actually check what's inside before buying it. It seems to be very popular.

I got my fuku-bukuro order from a cosmetics catalog. I could buy any 3 products for 5000 yen. I ended up getting some quality skin care products worth 16 000 yen for only 5000. Pretty nice, huh?


Anyway, New Year's bargains are still on! I finished shopping though. This year I want to save money, so one of my New Year's resolutions was to cure myself...yes, I'm a shopaholic. WISH ME LUCK!!

First day of work in 2012

The worst day is always the first day of work after a holiday. It really sucks. Officially, New Year's holiday is over on the 3rd of January, and many people start work on the 4th, especially office workers and public servants. Kids don't go to school yet though, for which many teachers take one or two paid holidays on the 4th and 5th to relax, visit relatives etc. 

Even the trains, without the hundreds of students I usually ride together with, seemed to be empty. The car I was sitting in was literally empty. I was all by myself-as Celine Dion would sing ...LOL. Anyway, this Wednesday I seriously thought, I was the only one doomed to work that day. It turns out, my assumption wasn't even far from the truth.

Ghost train...

Empty walkways...

For the past two days I was all alone in the English staff room, that I usually share with about 10 Japanese English teachers.  There were 5 more teachers in the main staff room, and 3 people in the office, plus the groundskeeper. After I got help to plug in the two gas heaters we have (I don't like messing with the gas myself), I kinda enjoyed being on my own, in a bright, quiet room. Spent my time with reading, preparing for my next team teaching, surfing the net, occasionally dozing off a bit. 

Where's everyone? Is this the new Biohazard beginning?

I think tomorrow there will be a big staff meeting, so I suppose almost everyone will turn up to work. Good-bye relaxing silence...welcome lot of stupid questions about how I spent the holidays. :) By the way, in my next entry, I will tell you about how I spent my holidays LOL. It's just that I hate when like 7 people (whom I don't even like that much) ask the same question one after the other, and you know it's just because they want to be polite, not because they really care. Plus, you have to pretend you are interested in what they did too.