Dec 31, 2021 (dw.com) - After another difficult year overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, people across Japan are looking forward to the familiarity of traditional "shogatsu" celebrations.
Along with Obon in August, New Year is the most important holiday period on the Japanese calendar.
Typically, people who have moved to the cities for work or their studies travel back to their hometowns to spend the vacation with their families and catch up with old friends. Companies have already started winding down their operations, and most will not reopen until the middle of next week.
For most Japanese, the holidays will follow a familiar pattern of traditional meals, visits to the local temple to pray for health and good fortune in the year ahead, and long-running television shows.
The final trip to the supermarket typically takes place on the morning of New Year's Eve, as many shops will be closed over the holidays, before many families settle down to The Red and White Song Battle aired by national broadcaster NHK.
This New Year's Eve staple has been running since 1945 and pits the nation's top female singers — the red team — against their male counterparts, in white.
As the clocks tick toward midnight, residents of villages and towns across Japan will brave the cold to head to their local shrine, where they will stand in line to approach the steps leading up to the community's place of worship, pull on a rope to sound a gong — a necessary move, to ensure the gods are awake and listening — and bow their heads to make a short prayer for the year to come.
In a tradition that has largely been lost amid the tower blocks of the cities, neighbors keep warm around blazing braziers and share mugs of steaming "amazake" rice wine.
At midnight, the huge bronze bells of countless temples can be heard echoing across the nation's darkened countryside.
Another tradition for many Japanese is to get up early to see the first sunrise of the New Year, with beaches or locations overlooking the iconic Mount Fuji always being popular spots.
Lunch on New Year's Day is often "osechi-ryori," a selection of small dishes that are sweet or dried and can be kept without refrigeration. Typically prepared in advance of the holiday or, more commonly now, purchased in advance, they mean that housewives do not have to prepare meals on the day and can also have time off.
The most popular "osechi-ryori" dishes include "kuromame" simmered black soybeans, herring roe, dried sardines in a sweet soy sauce, burdock, "kamaboko" pink-and-white seafood paste and mashed chestnut and sweet potatoes.
