In America, I always celebrated the new year with platters of meat and cheese, sitting on the couch and watching the ball drop on TV. That’s a liiiitle bit hard to do in the middle-of-the-countryside Japan, so this year, I celebrated in traditional Japanese fashion: hatsumode and the ringing of the bell.
Hatsumode
Outside of the big cities, Japan doesn’t really do parties for New Years. Instead, many people go to shrines to pray on New Years Day. This practice is called 初詣, hatsumode. It’s a time for people to wish for new things for the year, to return old charms, and to buy new ones. It’s also a great time to get an omikuji, a fortune, to check your luck! If you get a good fortune, keep it. If not, tie it up to cancel it out.
This year, my first shrine visit was to the Togakushi Middle Shrine; you can see a small line of people waiting in line to pray in the picture above. The snow was packed down from the many pairs of feet that had come here! I also got a stamp!
The Ringing of the Bell
Many people do hatsumode at temples instead of shrines. However, temples traditionally ring in the new year a little differently. I got a chance to see that for myself this year when a friend of mine invited me to a temple owned by one of her coworkers!
Starting around 11:30pm on New Years Eve, we went to the giant bell hanging by the temple gate. We walked up the stairs to it, and we each got a chance to pull back the log hanging near it and ring the bell. The tone seemed to ring inside us as well as echoing out to all the homes in the area. Just as the tone was about to fade out, the bell was struck again. People who lived nearby could hear the bell and they came to pray and ring the bell themselves. It rang 108 times, one time for each of the 108 sins and vices in Buddhism. This practice is called 除夜の鐘 , joya no kane.
As we listened, we could hear bells at other temples also ringing, and when our clocks hit midnight, we could see a small fireworks display from the direction of Nagano City. It was a wonderful evening!
What do you usually do for New Years? Let me know in the comments below!
