I often find myself
amazed at the way time moves. It’s been five months since I arrived in Japan,
yet it feels simultaneously shorter and longer since I left America. Everything
since July has been a whirlwind of events. Between finding an apartment,
figuring out my work schedule, learning how to do my job, exploring my area,
getting more familiar with how to do daily activities, learning and navigating
around the language, going to festivals and social events, meeting new people,
and simply trying to figure out how to set up my entire life here, it has been
a crazy couple of months. Every day has been full of learning experiences,
which have helped me to grow and better understand the area I live in. That
being said, I’m glad the whirlwind is slowing down!
In
light of the timing of this update, I thought that I would talk about the New
Year. This holiday week was spent in a way I’ve never spent it before. For
once, New Years took precedence over Christmas, and I spent the time leading up
to the new year, and the day of, celebrating in new and interesting ways. This
is an account of the day before New Years Eve, New Years Eve, and New Years
day.
My first step towards
celebrating the new year was by going with a friend and their family to make
mochi (お持ち付け) two days before. Mochi is the product of pounded rice. To make mochi you
use special rice that is high in gluten, which makes it easier shape into a
sticky, taffy-like substance. The night before you make mochi, you need soak
the rice in water. The next day, you steam it. After that, you take the
steaming hot mass of heavy white rice and put it into a large mortar. Using
what look like giant wooden pegs with long handles (which I will call
“hammers”), you then push the rice until it starts to stick together. All the
while, someone adds water (a little at a time) to the mixture to help it stick
together, and not stick to the mortar or the wooden pegs. Once the rice has
started to stick together, the fun really begins. Someone takes one of the huge
wooden hammers and starts to pound the mochi in large, strong blows. In between
the blows, someone else moves the mochi batter around, splashes water on it,
pulls and tugs at it, and tries to keep it from sticking to the mortar. Mind
you, this batter is piping hot, so they have to work quickly. The process of pounding
and moving the batter soon becomes a steady rhythm, with each person giving a
grunt as they finish to signal the other to go.
People
will take turns in each station, and little kids in particular have fun
pounding the mochi; though, it should be mentioned, they are given
significantly smaller hammers and only hit a few times as opposed to the large
number of repetitions the adults do. Pounding mochi is hard work: between the
hammering and moving around the extremely hot batter, it can be quite
exhausting. After the mochi batter has been pounded to the right consistency of
dough, it is moved out of the mortar and into a wooden tray that has been pre-floured
with mochi flour. People gather around then
to help tear off chunks of the dough and shape it into mochi balls of various
sizes. There is the general size of mochi, which is about the size of one’s
palm, and then there is the mochi used for the family altar. It is traditional
to put stacks of three mochi (a small, medium and large mochi) in front of the ancestor’s
altar in the home during New Years. While making mochi you can add a variety of
ingredients. We chose to make some with red bean paste in the middle, and roll
others in roasted soybean powder. The most commonly made mochi were simply
plain mochi. We even made a batch of brown rice mochi! This is not entirely
common to make, partially because it takes about twice as long to pound the brown
rice due to how hard it is. The flavor is very different from regular white
rice mochi. Since you can’t pound all the grains into a flat mixture, it’s a
lot lumpier, and has a meatier taste to it- kind of like brown rice!
One of
the best parts of making mochi from scratch is eating the hot, fresh mochi right
away. Even better than that is if someone brings a daikon (white radish) and
soy sauce. You grate the daikon into a bowl, add the soy sauce, dip the hot
mochi in it and mwah- heaven. It’s spicy, salty, and just a little sweet. I
think I ate my weight in daikon-dipped mochi.
By the
end of the morning I was covered in mochi flour, and had sticky mochi all over
my hands. There were about five families there with their kids running around,
and throughout the morning I was constantly being pulled by them to go and
play. At one point one of the boys brought a long string of mochi up to me and,
thrusting it in my face, yelled, “蛇！(Snake!)” I gasped in mock surprise, then pulled out my necklace (which has
a snake on it), and showed him my snake. Poor thing! I think I ruined his fun
because he looked so disappointed that I wasn’t scared… I made it up by acting
alarmed when he said it had bit him. All was well after that, and the
shenanigans continued.
After we
finished, we had a lovely meal with our hosts filled with curry, fried chicken,
rice and different salads. All of the families sat down to eat and talk while
the kids ran around, jumping in and out of people’s laps, laughing and munching
on pieces of chicken and mochi. It was a really wonderful, warm way to end a
day of working together: a shared meal where we all relaxed, talked, laughed
and ate. The feeling of the atmosphere was very casual, and familial. It was a
wonderful way to end our time of mochi making together. We all parted ways
after the meal with our huge bags of mochi, expressing our thanks and bowing
repeatedly while promising to see each other next year.
When I am in America,
I usually spent New Years Eve playing games with friends and family, cooking,
watching movies and hanging out. My New Years Eve in Japan this year was very
different. My friend Yellie and I set up a nabe pot (a heated pot) on her
kotatsu (a heated table) in front of the TV, and sat for a few hours making
nabe and watching kohaku. Kohaku is basically the Japanese equivalent of the
Times Square New Years Eve special. It is a four-hour review of popular music
and musicians in Japan over the past year. Old classic songs in the style of “enka” are also sung
intermittently throughout the program. Watching kohaku is one of the most
popular ways to spend New Years Eve in my area. So in this spirit, Yellie and I
sat at the heated table for a couple hours and watched musical performances
while boiling vegetables and meat in the nabe pot, eating them and drinking
tea.
Thirty minutes before
midnight we ended our nabe and music party to participate in another Japanese
tradition: going to Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines at midnight. People go
to the shrines to ring in the new year, ring the bells, drink hot amezake (thin
rice porridge) and zenzai (red bean soup), and pray for a blessed new year. The
Buddhist temples ring the bells a hundred and eight times, I believe, one for
each of the sins in Buddhism, so as to dispel them. It is believed that ringing the bells will cleanse them of
their sins during the previous year. This time of year is also the only time
that some of the Buddhist temples that are not generally open to the public
open their doors to everyone. Not wanting to miss out on this opportunity to
see these temples and experience, Yellie and I bundled up and set off into the
cold night air.
Walking about the
mostly deserted streets of my town, hearing the gong of the bells resonating
through the still brisk air, with the light from the lamps casting a surreal
haze upon the darkness, was a spectacular feeling. The night air chilled my
cheeks and ears, but I barely noticed. As we walked past open temple and shrine
doors, we could see the figures of monks in the doorways and enclosures-
shadowed and partially illuminated by the orange hue of the fires they were
burning. There is something so bewitching about walking through the roads lined
with traditional Japanese houses, catching glimpses behind the typically closed
temple doors, and hearing the ringing of the bells in the stillness of the
night. I walked in a daze of quiet awe and enchantment.
As we got closer to
the temple we were headed to, more people started showing up on the roads. Once
at the temple, Yellie and I walked around, drank some amezake, watched people
ring the bell and talked with some of the monks and our students. Since we live
in such a small town, we saw a good number of our students, and surprised them
with some impromptu “English time.” From there we went to a shrine, walked
around there a little bit, then headed home to grab a few hours of sleep
before…
New Years Day! What do
the Japanese do on the first day of the New Year? Sleep? No! They go and watch
the first sunrise of the New Year and make a wish. People go to a variety of
famous and favorite places to watch the first sunrise. This year I was invited
to join the third year students and teachers at one of my high schools in
watching the first sunrise together from the roof of our school. This meant
that at six o’clock, five hours after going to sleep, I rolled out of bed, into
warm clothes, and headed to school: fully prepared to freeze in solidarity with
my students and coworkers as we waited for the sun to come up. And so we did!
All of us were huddled on the roof: my students in their school uniforms
freezing, the teachers in their coats freezing, and all of us waiting for the
sun to appear over the mountain.
Finally, after what
seemed like an eternity of time spent teasing each other, talking, joking and
shivering, the sun rose up over the mountain- and behind a cloud. “Does that
count?” I asked in a mixture of confusion and hope. Seeing that no one was
moving, I assumed it didn’t. With baited breath, and many jokes with the
students about moving the clouds, we waited until the sun finally peaked out
from behind the cloud. Huzzah! Everyone pressed their hands together in prayer,
asking for blessings for the new year (my students specifically asking to pass
the college entrance exams). Then in a flash, we all hurried inside, down the
stairs and out to another shrine where all the students waited in line to ring
the bell and repeat their prayers. Finally they finished praying, and we all
returned to school where we prepared lunch together. Sleepy and cold but
excited, the teachers and students cooked huge batches of soup, zenzai, sushi,
and rice balls together for a few hours in a fun bonding and sharing time. I
was happy to cook with my students and coworkers, as well as meet some of their
parents. In my group we even played a game where the students taught me
Japanese words and I taught them the English ones; the mothers got so excited,
they started practicing as well! In the end, I think the mothers were having so
much fun they ended up practicing more English than my students. After eating
together, the third years who had not passed their college exams yet went to
study, and I went home to sleep.
Taking into account
all the events of the past few days, I have had an amazing and memorable first
new year in Japan. The experiences were incredible, but they would be nothing
without the warmth and friendliness of the people around me. It was a new years
of new experiences, enka music, surreal sights, meeting new people and bonding
with my community.
This is the start of
my 2014 year in Japan: may the light of this first sunrise shine upon a year
full of new experiences, lessons, and growth for us all.
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