A Traditional Custom of A Break For The Stomach, Nanakusa Day

I introduced about traditional Japanese New Year's dishes in my previous 3 posts. You might get an image that most Japanese people keep eating lots of food and drinking lots of Japanese Sake during New Year's celebration. 

Yes, since old days it would be true for many Japanese people. As I wrote in my previous posts, many people have gatherings with family and friends between January 1st and 3rd, which are actual New Year holidays. Even after the holidays people have New Year's parties at work. 

Traditionally between January 1st and 7th (or sometimes 15th) is the New Year's celebration period called "Matsu-no-uchi". Direct translation of the word is "During pine trees". It means a period for New Year entrance decorations, which are usually made from pine branches, paper and some other stuff as shown in the lower left hand side photo. On January 7th people put away those decorations from their gates and front porches, and finally go back to normal days.

In addition to putting away New Year decorations from entrances, there is another traditional custom for January 7th. It is called "Nanakusa" and people eat special rice porridge with 7 kinds of vegetables which is shown in the lower right hand side photo. Since most people have lots of food and drinks during "Matsu-no-uchi", their stomach must be tired by the 7th and eating rice porridge would be a good break for the stomach.

So, "Nanakusa" is an ancestral wisdom to care for the stomach exhausted by New Year's parties. The seven ingredient vegetables are actually seven plants grow naturally in Japan, thus everybody can find them easily since old times. Of course nowadays people can buy a set of the 7 vegetables in any grocery stores at this time of the year as in the upper photos above and nobody would go out to pick them up in a field.