The Year of the Rabbit
Showing posts with label new year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new year. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
New Year - After
By tradition people put some importance on the first instance of any action of the new year. It is vaguely seen as setting the tone for the year: do something well the first time and the task will go well throughout the year. The first shrine visit, for instance, is a very common tradition of the new years day. For some reason this newness kind of "wears off" after a week or ten days, so even if you do something for the first time after that it no longer seems to count.
New years day at Houzenji temple in Namba.
While the first temple visit is undoubtedly important for quite a lot of people, the tradition that really get people going is the new year sale, complete with "Lucky Bags". On January second, most stores open for one of the big sales of the year - children have New Years money burning in their pockets; salarymen have their year-end bonuses in the bank and the whole family is probably feeling a little cooped-up and frustrated after three or four days of enforced free time spent with each other and with assorted relatives.
Shinsaibashi shopping street on the second day of the year. If you ever wonder what a lot of Japanese do as a hobby wonder no more. Of course, just like us many people come out to watch the crowds as much as anything else.
The idea of lucky bags, fukubukuro, is that the store packs bags with merchandize and sells them with a hefty rebate, and you buy them without knowing exactly what you'll be getting. In practice, sometimes you'll be shown exactly what you'll get and sometimes it will be a complete surprise. They can range in price from a few hundred yen up to hundreds of thousands of yen, and cover such diverse items as clothing (you do get to pick a bag your size), skin care products, camera accessories, cars (you know the overall type but not the model or color) and - I'm not kidding - a wedding ceremony and reception.
This fukubukuro at a men's suit store is where the idea of lucky bags kind of fall apart. You're supposed to be surprised by the contents, after all, but I'm just not convinced that "dark suit, white shirt, striped tie" will be any kind of surprise for a patron of this store. Of course I could be wrong and you actually get a pearl-white tuxedo and top hat with sparklies. I doubt it, though.
We had to buy one lucky bag of some sort, and you can never go wrong with food. This bag was bought at a pickles store, and contains a number of umeboshi-related goodies. We got actual umeboshi to the left; small onions pickled in ume and shiso vinegar, then pickled ume to the center right. In the front is shredded, dried umeboshi to spread on your rice, and in the back right caramel candies with umeboshi bits inside. I may have to go back for more of those candies one day; they're really excellent and Ritsuko has already eaten most of the ones we got.
New years day at Houzenji temple in Namba.
While the first temple visit is undoubtedly important for quite a lot of people, the tradition that really get people going is the new year sale, complete with "Lucky Bags". On January second, most stores open for one of the big sales of the year - children have New Years money burning in their pockets; salarymen have their year-end bonuses in the bank and the whole family is probably feeling a little cooped-up and frustrated after three or four days of enforced free time spent with each other and with assorted relatives.
Shinsaibashi shopping street on the second day of the year. If you ever wonder what a lot of Japanese do as a hobby wonder no more. Of course, just like us many people come out to watch the crowds as much as anything else.
The idea of lucky bags, fukubukuro, is that the store packs bags with merchandize and sells them with a hefty rebate, and you buy them without knowing exactly what you'll be getting. In practice, sometimes you'll be shown exactly what you'll get and sometimes it will be a complete surprise. They can range in price from a few hundred yen up to hundreds of thousands of yen, and cover such diverse items as clothing (you do get to pick a bag your size), skin care products, camera accessories, cars (you know the overall type but not the model or color) and - I'm not kidding - a wedding ceremony and reception.
This fukubukuro at a men's suit store is where the idea of lucky bags kind of fall apart. You're supposed to be surprised by the contents, after all, but I'm just not convinced that "dark suit, white shirt, striped tie" will be any kind of surprise for a patron of this store. Of course I could be wrong and you actually get a pearl-white tuxedo and top hat with sparklies. I doubt it, though.
We had to buy one lucky bag of some sort, and you can never go wrong with food. This bag was bought at a pickles store, and contains a number of umeboshi-related goodies. We got actual umeboshi to the left; small onions pickled in ume and shiso vinegar, then pickled ume to the center right. In the front is shredded, dried umeboshi to spread on your rice, and in the back right caramel candies with umeboshi bits inside. I may have to go back for more of those candies one day; they're really excellent and Ritsuko has already eaten most of the ones we got.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
New Year - Before
Once again a New Year has been inflicted upon us. The glue on the final in-store Christmas tinsel had not yet time to set before it was all yanked down to be replaced with traditional New Years decorations, while harmonica-renderings of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer got cut mid-wail to be replaced by endless loops of Koto music.
The nice thing about having a real New Year holiday is how neatly you can fit a lot of symbolism into it - finishing things up before the big break; starting things anew after. Both households and companies tend to do a major housecleaning before the holiday; smaller shops and restaurants may close up completely and spend a day cleaning the whole place, top to bottom. Then, after the New Year, you can start up again in fresh, clean offices and shops.
A local restaurant cleaning up the place.
The New Years food (called "osechi ryouri") is a reflection of this. It is cold food, prepared before the new years eve but eaten afterwards. Unlike Europe you do not have a feast on New Years eve in other words, though some people with big appetites and little patience cheat a bit and start on the osechi ryouri after midnight rather than wait to the next morning. People can spend sometimes a week beforehand making various traditional and not-so-traditional dishes, in order to (theoretically) not have to cook at all for a few days in the beginning of the new year.
Huge numbers of people were milling in Kuromon market, buying up ingredients for the New Years holiday. Fugu - the famed poisonus-but-safe fish - was being sold everywhere. Not my favourite; remove the "it can kill you!" bit (which is rather hyped) and it's a nice but way overpriced firm white-meat fish.
We did not win ready-made osechi ryouri this year for some inexplicable reason, so we made our own. It's fun and you get to eat only food you like. We bought a lot of the food of course (nobody makes their own kamaboko or konnyaku, though it would be fun to try once), but we did make kuromame, homemade soba (buckwheat noodles - I'm making a separate post about that) and XXX among other things. The kuromame ("black bean") turned out really well; it is a kind of dried gray bean that is soaked, then simmered in a dark soy and mirin-based sauce for a day or so together with a rusty nail (the rust helps turn them black). We had to scour a torn down building nearby to find a suitable nail, actually - pre-rusted nails are not a common article in kitchen supply-stores it seems. We've saved the nail for next year.
Our New Years food. The tower thingy on the upper left is mochi (sticky rice) and a mikan, and is a traditional decoration. The miso soup is also traditional style, with a very light, sweet kind of miso, root vegetables and mochi (which manages to kill people every year). The flower-like slices on the bottom left is kamaboko (baked fish paste - think "fiskbullar" for Swedish speakers) made with a boiled egg in the center. On the upper right there's kuromame (black beans) and gomame - dried fish sauteed in soy sauce, mirin and sake. Gomame, by the way, is possibly my favourite thing on this table.
The black beans described above. I spent quite a bit of time getting this picture so I wanted to show it off (you try to take a picture of something black and glossy against a white background).
The nice thing about having a real New Year holiday is how neatly you can fit a lot of symbolism into it - finishing things up before the big break; starting things anew after. Both households and companies tend to do a major housecleaning before the holiday; smaller shops and restaurants may close up completely and spend a day cleaning the whole place, top to bottom. Then, after the New Year, you can start up again in fresh, clean offices and shops.
A local restaurant cleaning up the place.
The New Years food (called "osechi ryouri") is a reflection of this. It is cold food, prepared before the new years eve but eaten afterwards. Unlike Europe you do not have a feast on New Years eve in other words, though some people with big appetites and little patience cheat a bit and start on the osechi ryouri after midnight rather than wait to the next morning. People can spend sometimes a week beforehand making various traditional and not-so-traditional dishes, in order to (theoretically) not have to cook at all for a few days in the beginning of the new year.
Huge numbers of people were milling in Kuromon market, buying up ingredients for the New Years holiday. Fugu - the famed poisonus-but-safe fish - was being sold everywhere. Not my favourite; remove the "it can kill you!" bit (which is rather hyped) and it's a nice but way overpriced firm white-meat fish.
We did not win ready-made osechi ryouri this year for some inexplicable reason, so we made our own. It's fun and you get to eat only food you like. We bought a lot of the food of course (nobody makes their own kamaboko or konnyaku, though it would be fun to try once), but we did make kuromame, homemade soba (buckwheat noodles - I'm making a separate post about that) and XXX among other things. The kuromame ("black bean") turned out really well; it is a kind of dried gray bean that is soaked, then simmered in a dark soy and mirin-based sauce for a day or so together with a rusty nail (the rust helps turn them black). We had to scour a torn down building nearby to find a suitable nail, actually - pre-rusted nails are not a common article in kitchen supply-stores it seems. We've saved the nail for next year.
Our New Years food. The tower thingy on the upper left is mochi (sticky rice) and a mikan, and is a traditional decoration. The miso soup is also traditional style, with a very light, sweet kind of miso, root vegetables and mochi (which manages to kill people every year). The flower-like slices on the bottom left is kamaboko (baked fish paste - think "fiskbullar" for Swedish speakers) made with a boiled egg in the center. On the upper right there's kuromame (black beans) and gomame - dried fish sauteed in soy sauce, mirin and sake. Gomame, by the way, is possibly my favourite thing on this table.
The black beans described above. I spent quite a bit of time getting this picture so I wanted to show it off (you try to take a picture of something black and glossy against a white background).
Monday, December 31, 2007
Happy New Year
Happy New Year, 明けましておめでとうございます och Ett Gott Nytt År!
Design by Ritsuko Watanabe.
We're leaving the Year of the Pig and entering the Year of the Rat according to the Chinese zodiac. It naturally means we have license to plaster rodent images everywhere over the next year. I couldn't find a willing subject in time for this post - I'm not about to scour the nighttime alleys of Shinsaibashi for a rat during New Year's evening - so this rodent was happy to stand in.
It's the Year of the Rat. What have you done for your computerized rodent lately?
Design by Ritsuko Watanabe.
We're leaving the Year of the Pig and entering the Year of the Rat according to the Chinese zodiac. It naturally means we have license to plaster rodent images everywhere over the next year. I couldn't find a willing subject in time for this post - I'm not about to scour the nighttime alleys of Shinsaibashi for a rat during New Year's evening - so this rodent was happy to stand in.
It's the Year of the Rat. What have you done for your computerized rodent lately?
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