New Years Day

After an eventful night, I woke up to eat another amazing meal courtesy of Atsu's family. I've really appreciated their hospitality and bringing me into their home. It felt super special to be able to be a part of not only a special occassion in Japan but a special gathering within Atsu's family. I believe showing appreciation is something I want to work on a bit more in Japanese because I don't think I was able to properly show how much I really was moved by everything they included me in. I get a little shy even in English around new people but not being perficient in Japanese makes it a lot more difficult to get how I feel accross! For example, I'm never really sure when I should bow or when I should bow to show appreciation. Everyone was extremely kind and did their best to communicate with me even though I can only understand a very small portion of what they were saying.

It's a tradition to eat mochi during the morning of new years. Eating this mochi was extremely difficult! The texture of the mochi is almost similar to the thickness of peanut butter and the elasticity of chewing gum. Biting off a piece was difficult without having a long string of mochi hang out of your mouth. Even chewing the mochi is difficult, everything about it was a struggle! While I was eating the mochi, Atsu let me know that every year people actually die from eating this unsweetened mochi. After eating some of the mochi, I completely understand how someone could die from eating it. Every swallow took effort and if it got stuck in my throat I would have probably became one of the mochi-eating statitistics. A couple days later, we actually saw that there were people who died this year eating mochi. When eating leftovers of the soup, Atsu's mom kindly left out the mochi and saved me from certain death. I'm glad I got the experience of a traditional Japanese New Years morning but I think the mochi will be one custom I'll try to avoid from here on 😆

After eating breakfast, we all headed out to the shinto temple to participate in what one could call a cleansing ceremony. I need to do a bit more research on the meaning of everything I experienced, but the general idea is to remove the impruties from your spirit in preparation for the new year.

It has been raining quite a bit, so Atsu handed me an umbrella with the writing "fushigi kasa" on it which translates to "mysterious umbrella". I think 不思議(fushigi) has become my favorite word in Japanese. It's used much more often and casually than in english so it's really fun to be able to describe things I don't quite understand as fushigi. We found out later that this umbrella has some cool designs that show up only when it's wet. Super fushigi if you ask me.

We went up several flights of stairs to reach the temple enterance. I noticed the skyline of Fukui as we walked up and the view of the mountains in Fukui is truely breathtaking. Growing up in Ohio, I haven't had many mountains on the skyline. It's always been super flat so being able to walk around and see a bunch of mountains feels a bit surreal! I'm sure it's super normal for residents here but I think they're really lucky to have something so cool in the backdrop of their everyday lives.

Before entering the temple, we waited outside next to some cauldrons with a super calming fire inside of them. Atsu's family gave the priests his name and we waited for the next ceremony to begin inside the temple. After entering the temple, there were signs informing us that taking pictures was not allowed. Atsu was telling me that it was because the kami or god could be present in the room and taking a picture of them would not be okay. It's always interesting to learn about ceremonies such as this because it means without being there in person I would not have been able to understand or even see pictures.

The priest started speaking with a sing-songy voice and walking all accross the room. At one point he picked up a pole with various papers on the end and waved it around. At another portion, he waved a pole with metals that sort of worked similar to a wind chime. All this time, he has been saying things I can't understand in the sing-songy voice.

We were eventually called up by family name to do the traditional giving respects to the shrine. This is bowng twice, clapping twice, then bowing once more and making a wish or leaving a message for the kami. I didn't realize we would be getting up and standing in front of the whole room to do this before entering the ceremony. Atsu leaned over to me during the beginning of the ceremony and told me to follow whatever actions he did. Since I didn't know what was coming, I was a little nervous 😅 We were the first family to go up so I wasn't sure what was about to happen.

Afterwards, we went outside where amulets and various charms for new years good luck were for sale. We also did a おみくじ which is sort of like a fortune telling of your year to come. I thought it was a bit funny that even in temples, there is a sort of gatcha game ritual. This fortune is a bit more meaningful that the nomral fortunes you can get throughout the year, since it's the first one and even has a different name for being the first of the year.

This experience has made me want to learn more about the religions within Japan as well so that my next visit I will have a better understanding of the traditions and what is going on during these ceremonies. Next time maybe it will be less fushigi 😄

Later that night, we exchanged some American sweets (Buckeyes, Cookies and Creme Hershey Kisses, and Cookie flavored M&Ms) that I brought and some various japanese snacks that Atsu's family put out on the table. It was fun talking about how America and Japan were different in respect to sweets and other various subjects. While eating the sweets, a popular show was on TV where contestants guess whether choice A or choice B is correct. I was wrong every time but the kids were correct so maybe I've lost my edge 😅 Japanese TV is so much different than American television for a variety of reasons, but this day has so much information in it I will leave Japanese TV for another section!

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