New Years

Once again, sorry about waiting so long until posting. My Chinese host-sister was chatting on our host-parents computer to her family in China and somehow screwed up the computer. So our host-parents don't want us to use their computer anymore. It's rather inconvenient.

At any rate Happy New Years to everybody!! New Years is really huge over here in Japan. Everybody buys these New Year's post cards called nengajou and they send them to their friends, family, and customers if they own a business, as well as coworkers and bosses. And these are special postcards. Each one has a special stamp on it that tells the post office people that the card is not to be delivered until the first of January.

And on New Years many people gather at the many shrines and temples throughout Japan to pray in the New Year when it strikes midnight. My host-family, however, likes to stay at home away from the crowds. So my host-mom made a big New Years Eve dinner and invited some people over. So it was me, my host-parents, my host-aunt and -uncle, my host-brother and his wife, and my boyfriend and his older brother who was visiting from America.

It was really interesting. Most of the food that they eat has some sort of meaning to it. For example, my host-dad made this traditional Japanese food called Toshikoshi soba. Basically it's really long noodles that are supposed to give you long life if you eat them on New Years. And then my host-mom put out bowls of edamame beans which are supposed to mean "work hard!" And she also made this taro root paste thing for the soba noodles that's really sticky and it's supposed to mean "never give up." I had everything except for the taro root paste, which looked rather unappetizing.



And we ate the dinner in a traditional Japanese room that we hardly ever use. And it had all sorts of cool stuff in it. Of course it was really cold so we had two heaters in the room going on full blast as well as the heated rug that we were sitting on. Hachi, the cat, really likes warm places, so by the end of the meal she was napping under the table, which is the low sort of table that you sit on the floor for.



They also had these interesting music boxes. Apparently if a woman has a child, the woman's parents send her a music box depending on the gender of the child. But I think it's just for New Years. So, my host-mom had a son and a daughter. The music box for the boy-child has arrows in it and the music box for the girl-child has the paddles for the traditional Japanese badminton game that people usually play at New Years.

And when you turn the knobs at the bottom of the boxes, a New Years song comes out. Really cool.

Well, I won't have access to the internet until the 8th, so until then...Matane!