あけましておめでとうございます!

Back from Christmas!

After being out of Akita for almost two weeks, I am back at the office and back to the snowglobe that is my city. Although I missed it terribly, it was nice to get out of the snow for a while, to Miyazaki for Christmas and Tokyo for New Year’s.

I do believe I had a right proper Japanese New Year’s. I was at Sensoji Shrine in Asakusa (one of the most famous-y shrines in Tokyo) at midnight when the bells rung 108 times, which took almost a half hour due to the long pauses, the much bowing, and the old men who rung them. At ten in the morning on January 1, we beat mochi with the guys who ran the hotel we were staying at. Mochi is a traditional Japanese food eaten on New Year’s. You put the rice paste stuff in this hollowed out tree trunk-like container, and then smash it with giant mallets resembling Thor’s Hammer. You do this for a long time. Then you can eat mochi balls in several different ways. There was a plate of sugar and brown granules of some kind (I don’t ask questions), or the mochi dipped in soy sauce and then wrapped in nori (which was surprisingly delicious…and nori is seaweed), and then mochi added to soup. All drunk down with beer and sake. At eleven am!!

We also visited Meiji Shrine on New Year’s Day to wish our luck for the next year. The first shrine visit of the year is a really important part of the Japanese New Year, and Meiji Shrine being the other famous-y shrine in Tokyo, it was flooded with families coming to start the year off right. The organized chaos of the massive crowd was a testament to the efficiency of these people – if that many people assembled anywhere in America, the line would be out to the street, and people would be getting tasered. But guards with nice signs featuring a cartoony animal and ‘please wait a moment’ let people up to the shrine in waves to throw in money, bow twice, clap twice, and bow again, before praying and then making their exit. Even with the surge of bodies, we were only in line for thirty minutes, a feat which would easily have taken a few hours in America.

I had visited Udo Shirne when I was in Miyazaki with Rick and Martha before Christmas, and the place had been covered in rabbits, since 2011 had been the year of the rabbit. Meiji and Sensoji shrines were instead covered in pictures of dragons! And arrows, and all kinds of imagery I didn’t really understand. I asked my Japanese teacher to explain some of the things to me, but it’s still a struggle to look at Asian art and architecture, and to understand the images and the concepts and the worldviews that are going on there. In Europe, I understood how cathedrals and churches worked, because I understood the imagery and the worldview that made them work. Here, I don’t, and I am beginning to appreciate how much worldview affects how a society is built up, both ideologically and physically. Architecture has nearly as much to say about what a society believes as its laws and customs do. Everything I see is something I need to learn, and very little by very little I am putting pieces together that make Japan make more sense to me. The Japanese want foreigners to understand their culture, to ask questions, and to think about it. I’m trying to get better about understanding and asking those questions.

A big thank you to everyone who sent me a package or a Christmas card or a letter (I had a whole pile waiting for me when I got back to my apartment, and it was like second-Christmas!). I hope you all enjoyed your holidays!


For your edificiation:
How to write "Happy New Year" in Japanese - あけましておめでとうございます

How to say "Happy New Year" in Japanese - Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu