How We Spend New Years Eve in Japan :: Essays Papers

How We Spend New Years evening in JapanWhat do you usually do on New Years Eve? Does your family have something special to do for the New Year? Maybe you have a party at the bar or your friends house, or you may pass along time with your family. In Japan, the way of spending time on New Years Eve is pretty different from the American way. In the morning, we Japanese people unused the whole house. This process is called Ousouji in Japan. This doesnt mean that Japanese people clean the house only once a year. There is a special content for this cleaning. Its purpose is to welcome the New Year and to wish a better life than the former year. Cleaning the house, which is covered with annual dust, is a really all-important(prenominal) way to start a new year. After finishing Ousouji, women start cooking Osechi. This is a traditional Japanese dish which is eaten a few years after the New Year. The dish is based on fish, beans, and egg. We eat Osechi because there is an old story sayin g one shouldnt use a cooking prod within three days from the New Year. This gives a break to the mother who cooks every day. While women are cooking Osechi, men are hanging Shimenawa, which is a kind of decoration made from rice stems. It is hung on the front door. This custom comes from the farmers wish to have a full(a) harvest next year. Today, we wish for good fortune and a good year. Evening time, after we finish preparing for New Years, we normally watch a TV program called Singing Battle amid the Red and the White Team. It has been on the air for about 50 years and keeps over 50 percent of the audiences ratings every year. We think about this program as a part of a closing moment of the year. While, or after watching singing battle, we eat Toshikoshi Soba, which means New Years Eve Noodle in English. As you know, the noodle is long, so we wish longer life, including healthy body, by eating Toshikoshi Soba. Finally, the last thing to do for New Years Eve is to listen to Juy a No Kane, which means the watch-night bell in English. This bell is like a countdown in America. But we ring it 108 times.