I started out my year detoothing a vagina, how about you?
Being not Christian, Christmas really hasn’t even become close to anything one might call popularity until recently. Thus, in the cold season, New Years is the bigger holiday. For a lot of you, it’s a time to drink in a bar and then kiss someone you met 2 hours earlier at midnight. Hopefully you give them a non attached french kiss (those are so gorgeous) so that you can properly wet all skin within 2.54cm of their mouth. Anywho, it’s not usually that here, but then again, it kinda is. Like a man that got a C section or a vagina with teeth, it’s complicated.
Before the New Year is officially rung in, things can go a bunch of different ways. Some people will go to a bar (or club or whatever) and party until midnight/6, families will probably just stay home watching TV. Annoying, racist, cranky old men yearning for the past might have some special soba noodles (which is supposed to be a symbol of long life), but they will die when they eat hot mochi (餅, もち, they call it a rice cake, but it’s a chewy rice thing. sometimes there’s bean paste inside. it’s actually tasty); cranky man is dead (applause). Since celebrating beforehand is relatively recent, and is mostly catered to a young audience, the different stuff really happens sometime on and after January 1.
If Georgia O Keeffe was a chef.
People will usually go to a temple some time during the 1st. This is something that can’t wait for some people, so they’ll go to the temple right after midnight. They ring a bell and everyone starts a spontaneous, but well choreographed, dance. The next day they’ll begin to eat stuff from a big box. The stuff in this box is called osechiryori (お節料理, おせちりょうり) and it’s mostly just a bunch of little foods that each have a meaning. There’s a ton of them and I’m not going to tell you the meaning, but you can click and see for yourself.
Look at us. We mean something dammit!
New Years in Japan isn’t really a festival, but a bunch of little things that each have their own meaning (all good, except when you choke and die).
