Typical Schedules Of Japanese People At The End Of A Year

New Year celebration is one of the biggest seasonal events for Japanese people. Also it's the biggest vacation time and most people have their New Year vacation at least between December 31st and January 3rd. However, traditionally there are many things to do as preparations for New Year celebration, so most people become more busy before having their vacation. 

One of the pre-new-year preparations is sending out New Year greeting cards as I introduced in my previous post on November 22nd, then after finishing the work, what else people would do for the preparations? 

First, people have a big clean-up of their house, then go out for shopping to get all the stuff for New Year celebration. There are traditional New Year decorations, and since the decorations are for one time use, people buy them every year. It is said that the new year decorations should be set up by 30th. 

Also, from January 1st to 3rd is traditionally the time for family gathering and New Year celebration parties. People eat New Year special dishes with their family and friends and actually the traditional dishes should be cooked before New Year. So, after Christmas grocery markets are still full of people coming to buy the ingredients or cooked new year food. 

Then, for those who prefer homemade new year dishes, between December 30th and 31st would be the busiest time for the cooking. Some people even make Mochi (rice cake) from sweet rice at home on December 30th and decorate part of it at home as you can see in the photos above and eat the rest during New Year celebration days.

On December 31st, the last day of the year, people eat one kind of Japanese noodle "Soba" called "Toshikoshi-soba (Noodle for New Year's Eve)". It is a tradition for the end of a year to wish longevity. After eating the noodle, finally it is the relaxing time to wait for count down!

Traditional Customs Need Practicality To Survive?

December 21^st was "Toji Day" which means a a winter solstice day. Since the day has the shortest daytime in the year, Japanese have traditional seasonal event for this day.

With traditional Japanese customs, people eat pumpkins and set Yuzu (one kind of Japanese citrus) afloat in the bath before they take a bath. Some say the reasons of these customs came from the facts that Yuzu is a kind of tree which has a long life span, and strong resistance against tree diseases, also pumpkins are good for preventing a cold because they contain good nutrition such as vitamins. Some other say the custom came from the round shape and the yellow color of pumpkin and Yuzu which remind of the shape and color of the sun. 

I heard many different countries all over the world have a seasonal event on the winter solstice day, too. It would be a natural consequence since this day seems like the end/start of the solar cycle and it must have been important for people since ancient times. Apparently Korean people eat red beans soup containing rice cakes for this day. One of my friends told me that in her hometown before people have the dish people spread cooked red beans in their room by throwing beans to the wall when she was in school. It was to avoid evils from home.

The Korean custom sounds familiar for Japanese people. In Japan red beans is also often considered as a lucky item which can avoid evils, so we have other seasonal event to eat red beans soup. Moreover Japanese eat "red beans rice" traditionally when they have something to celebrate. Even for the winter solstice day, people in Nara prefecture cook pumpkins with red beans. There are sometimes common customs between countries.

However, she told me that she doesn't think people still keep the old custom in Korea. actually, to make the beans ritual work and avoid bad lucks and evils from the house, it is said that people need to leave the scattered beans at least one whole day. Then, obviously cleaning work on the next day is hard. We can easily imagine sometimes the stains caused by red beans wouldn't be able to be removed. 

In Japan, still the traditional custom for the winter solstice day is practiced. Every year supermarkets have piled pumpkins and Yuzu on the day and people eat pumpkin dishes and set Yuzu in their bath at night. Perhaps it was because the custom happened to have enough practicality although people didn't know initially and also doesn't bring any troublesome afterwards?

There is a previous post about the winter solstice day!

What Are Japanese Galapagos Cellphones (Gala-kei)?

I introduced recent Wi-Fi services and the circumstances in Japan in my previous post of my another blog on December 15th. Then, today I'd like to introduce Japanese cellphones which were prosperous before smartphones and tablets came out. 

As I wrote in my post on 15th, until several years ago each Japanese cellphone had always had a phone number and an email address provided by the cellphone company which sold the cellphone because Japanese regulation didn't allow people to change sim-card by themselves. Cellphone companies improved their products individually and people could use their phone number and email address as far as they used same cellphone company. So, when people switched their cellphone company, they had to change their phone number and email address.

It was inconvenient but as far as people keep using same cellphone company, it wasn't a problem and they could renew their cellphone machines to a latest model. Since Japanese cellphones included email functions from the early days, it got color display quickly and by 2000 new models with camera came out. People started exchanging photos via emails with their new cellphones and it became an explosive hit item. 

After that, Japanese cellphones got more and more small improved functions such as a small window display on the surface to show mails arrivals, missed calls, and time, connection condition, and battery level, IR communications function, internet accesses and so on. Therefore, when first smart phones came out, some people said, "So what? Almost same things are available with my current cellphone." In fact, still certain number of people are using the old-type Japanese cellphones even now.

Of course the emails with old-type cellphone can't see files made by computer, moreover nowadays the size of most internet sites became too heavy for these cellphones, but still they has enough advanced functions similar to smart phones. Then, from some point people started calling them "Galapagos Cellphones". 

Galapagos is the name of islands on the Pacific Ocean belonging to Ecuador. Location-wise the islands has been isolated and creatures on the islands are uniquely evolved. The famous historic scholar Charles Darwin (1809-1882) visited the islands and wrote "The origin of Species". Yes, it is a metaphorical name to express it got isolated improvements inside of Japanese islands.

The cellphones are still on sale and some people prefer them over smart phones. Apparently their OS systems are particular to these cellphones, moreover the OS is different between each cellphone company thus it is said that it won't be a target for computer viruses because they are too minor. So, perhaps they have less functions but safer. Then, do you think they can survive for a long time same as elephant tortoises on Galapagos Islands?