New Years Day

 As we were walking around Arima Onsen on New Year's Eve, we noticed that many of the buildings were decorated with Japan's version of the "New Year's Wreath".   Samples are shown in these first three photos.  Most of them involved bamboo or pine or bay berries or oranges or flowering cabbages.  But there were more variations than we can catalog here.

 Moriyama-san explained to us that the New Year holiday is considered to be the most important of the year in Japan.  For starters, most people get at least a week off work - starting on December 29 and continuing to January 4 or 5.  Traditionally, the time before new years is spent cleaning the home, as it is considered important to get the year off to a clean start.  Each year is believed to be a unique entity. The New Year celebration is all about leaving the bad stuff behind in the old year and starting the new year with only good luck, good fortunes, and good health.

On New Year's Eve we got back to the hotel at about 9:00 pm after the Onsen.  We picked up a bottle of wine and turned on the TV set to catch the Japanese version of Dick Clark's Rocking New Year's Eve.  There were musical performances leading up to midnight.  Just before the magic moment, they switched the action to a Buddhist temple where, at the stroke of midnight, they started chiming the temple bell.  At the same instant, we could hear through the hotel's glass windows the sound of the bells ringing in Kobe.

The bells rang for quite a while.  As it turns out, it is tradition is to ring the temple bells 108 times.  This is done to drive away the 108 worldly desires of Buddhist teaching.  Mind you, the ringing of these bells does not sound like the rolling peals of a church bell such as we are used to.  Each ring is a single strike of the bell, a single gong, that is allowed to resound and then fade away for 30 seconds or more before the the next strike.
I suppose if we'd been on the ball we would have gone to one of the temples to watch the crowd.  But honestly, we had no idea that New Year was such a big deal.  (By the way...there were no fireworks at all...in case you were wondering.)

I had to work the next day, on January 1.  Theresa went out to go shopping and quickly found that there was NOTHING open and very few people on the streets - until she got to the Sannomiya area of Kobe, that is.  In Sannomiya, she was caught up in a crowd of people that were all moving in the same direction.  She later realized that they were all headed to the Sannomiya Shrine.

If New Year's Eve belongs to Buddhism, then New Year's Day belongs to Shintoism.  The crowds naturally formed into an orderly line.  (Japan, I think, is the only place in the world where this happens.)  Theresa fell in line too and slowly worked her way towards the shrine.  The sidewalks were lined with little booths that sprang up over night.  Street vendors were making and selling all varieties of foods.  You could by barbecued meat on a stick, or sweets, or tako-yaki (octopus balls).  Mocchi (glutenous rice cake) is one of the traditional foods for New Year.  In the photo above, you can see a boy pounding the rice with a wooden mallet.

Once inside the shrine she found people performing all kinds of traditional rituals in search of good luck.  Coins were thrown to Shinto statues.  Statues of lesser deities were rubbed about the head and belly.  Hands were washed in the temple fountains.  Horoscopes were being sold, palms were being read, and sake was being drunk.  A genuine festival had broken out.

Consider this an introduction to the New Year Holiday in Japan.  There will be more stories to come.