Coming of Age Day
Now Playing: Your a Big Boy Now!
Monday, January 12,2004

Coming of Age Day is a National Holiday here in Japan. We celebrate all those who will turn 20 years old this year. Lots of families have been visiting the shrines in celebration for the last few days.
I mostly stayed home (still feeling a bit under the weather). Went to temple this morning and had tea with the minister. He gave me some basic kanji to start memorizing and a simple text in kanji written by Shinran Shonin. Oh, dear. I guess I'm going to have to study this too! Came home and went for a short run to try to get some of the cobwebs out of my brain. I've gained 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks and I haven't been running for awhile because it was so rainy in California and then I got sick (sinus headache, groan).
It feels oh, so good, to get out in the fresh air and blow off some steam.
I baked chocolate chip cookies today and Didik and a friend came over to make sure that they were good. I made tamale pie for them. Neither had ever had this treat. I'm not sure if they really liked this spicy dish but they both went back for seconds.

NEW YEAR'S TRADITIONS AND CULTURE

I missed this holiday because I was in the states, but I've heard from the kids that there is a lot of tradition in Japan revolving around New Year's. I will try to fill you in on a bit of this interesting culture...
There is a tv show in Japan (I think similar to Dick Clark). Lots of people watch this on New Year's Eve. It's called Kohaku (sorry if the spelling isn't quite right). They play all the past hits of the old year just like we do in the states.
Otoshidama is a biggie with kids here. It is very traditional to give gifts of money to kids. They can get quite a bit of money from parents, aunts and uncles and so on. I gather that it is not uncommon to get 5,000 to 10,000 yen as a gift. That adds up to a few hundred dollars if they are lucky.
Nenga are cute postcards that are traditionally sent out during the holidays. I received quite a few of these postcards with cute drawings (monkeys were popular this year - it's the year of the monkey!)
I was surprised to discover that many of my students went to a shrine at midnight to purchase their fortunes called omikuji and to pray for a good year. Toshikoshi soba is also a tradition to eat at midnight.
The most interesting tradition that I would like to start for myself is getting up early (or maybe not going to sleep at all) to see the first sunrise of the year. This is called hatsuhinode. Many of my students said that they stayed up all night and then watched the sun come up and then went to bed. Oh, it must be nice to be young and full of energy. yawn.