Japanese New Year

The New Year is celebrated different around the world, here is how it is celebrated in Japan, along with some Japanese phrases!

Recap

In my last Japanese blog, titled General Emailing I learnt about how to write an email to a hotel to ask if they had a room available for my family!

Homework

My homework was to research and write about the Japanese New Year, and this was exciting!

At the end of my last session with my Japanese tutor, I learnt how to say an important phrase for the new year!

Have a good new year!

You otoshi wo

I began to do some googling into the Japanese new year, and how they celebrate! And it sounds really lovely! I learnt that:

• On New Years Eve, Japanese people visit a shrine or a temple around midnight
• Japanese people like to start on a clean state, so they partake in something called ‘Oosouji’ which means ‘Big cleaning’ - They clean every inch of the house!
• The traditional new years food includes Toshikoshi soba, which is eaten on the eve on new years, and ozoni and osechi which is eaten on the day of new years!
• There is a tradition where children get envelopes of money
• ‘Hatsumode’ is where they visit a shrine during the first few days of the new year to pay respects and wish for a healthy and happy new year! Families usually go together.
• Some people watch the first sunrise of the year, this is called ‘hatsuhinode’

New Year sounds really fun in Japan! I hope to experience it one day!

For my homework, I put together some sentences in English that I wanted to write, and researched some words which would be useful to know.

“Oshogatsu” means “new year” and “Nihon hito” means Japanese people, “Taberu” means “eating”, “Homon” means “visit” and “Jinja” means “shrine” - And so using these words, I was able to write out these three sentences:

On New Years evening, Japanese people eat Toshikoshi Soba

Nihon hito wa taberu Toshikoshi soba ga yoru oshogatsu desu

On New Years day, Japanese people eat ozoni and osechi

Nihon hito wa taberu ozoni to osechi ga oshogatsu yobi desu

On New Years day, Japanese people visit a shrine

Nihon hito wa jinja homon suru ga oshogatsu yobi desu

After all of this, I realised that “Nihon Jin” may be better to use.

Feedback

Happy new year in Japanese is “Akemashite Omedeto (Gozaimasu)”, where “Omedeto” is a term like “Congratulations” or “Celebrations”, for example, to say “Happy Birthday” in Japanese, it’s “Tanjyobi Ometo” where “Tanjyobi” means “Birthday”

If we break down the work “Akemashite”, “Akeru” means “Open” (verb) so “Akemashite Omedeto” pretty much translates to “Open Congratulations/Celebrations” which is a little confusing but it makes sense, as the new year is like opening a door to a new path!

For my first sentence, I used a few wrong terms.

As mentioned above, I should’ve used “Nihon jin” instead of “Nihon hito”, and I also used the wrong term for New Year's Eve. Here’s the correct sentence:

On December 31st, Japanese people eat toshikoshi soba.

Nihon-jin wa oomisoka no yoru ni toshikoshi-soba wo tabemasu.

To understand this better, it’s easier to break the sentence down…

1. Nihon-jin wa / We start by describing our “who” - and in this case it’s Japanese people
2. Oomisoka no yoru ni / Then describe the “at” - This is the evening of the 31st of December
3. Toshikoshi-soba wo / This is the “What”
4. Tabemasu / This is the objective particle, and because it ends with ‘-masu’ we don’t need to use ‘desu’

If I additionally wanted to use ‘we’ as in, me and a group of friends are eating toshikoshi-soba, I could use the term “Watashi tachi”, a more masculine term of this would be “Boku tachi”

For the second sentence, I used “osyogatsu yobi” which I thought meant New Years Day, as days of the week use “Yobi” for “-Day”, but “Yobi” can only be used for days of the week, so this isn’t correct and I should’ve used either “Ganjitsu” which means “Jan 1st”, or “Osyogatsu no hi” which means “New Years Day”, where “hi”/“bi” means “a day”

Here’s the correct structure of the second sentence:

On Jan 1st, Japanese people eat (ozoni and osechi)

Nihon-jin wa ganjitsu ni (ozoni to osechi) wo tabemasu

I didn’t exactly know what these foods were though, but “Ozoni” is a soup with mochi, which sounds really tasty! My tutor told me about an event called “Mochi tsuki” which is a Mochi making event!

“Osechi” is a new years bento box, with lots of different things in it!

For my final sentence, this had to change a bit as well.

I wanted to write about going to a shrine, but a word I should’ve used at the end of the sentence is “ikimasu” when broken down, “iku” (verb) means “go”, and in this sentence, just like the previous, I used the wrong term for New Years Day.

Here is how I should’ve written it:

On Jan 1st, Japanese people go to a shinto shrine

Nihon-jin wa ganjitsu ni jinjya ni ikimasu

Study Notes

From the last sentence, I could’ve replaced “jinjya”, which means shinto shrine, with “otera”, which means a Buddhist temple! Both of these are common temples in Japan.

With that in mind, I could write a sentence using that and an additional word “oomisoka” which means “end of the year”

At the end of the year, Japanese people go to a buddhist temple

Nihon-jin wa oomisoka ni otera ni ikimasu

With all this talk about shrines, someone could ask you this question!

(Amy), do you want to go to a shinto shrine?

Amy wa jinjya ni ikitai desuka?

And this can be followed up with…

When do you want to go?

Itsu ikitai desuka?

There are loads of great things I’ve learnt about the Japanese culture here, and I can’t wait to one day experience it when I go there!

Study Notes

Open the door

Doa wo akeru

In Japanese, the word “Now” is “Ima”, this is how you can use it to ask a question:

Where are you now?

Ima doko ni imasu ka?

I would reply to this with:

I’m in (Bognor)

(Bognor / ボクナ) no jikka ni imasu.

Bognor is my home town, and the word used above “Jikka” means “Home” (in home town)

From here, you could be asked something like this:

Is (Bognor) close to (London) ?

(Bognor) wa (London) kara chikai desuka?

Where the word “chikai” means “close”

In Japanese, the romaji つ is used to represent multiple types of characters.

にっぽん　– nippon

きっぷ – kippu (ticket)

きっと – kitto (probably)

Here you can see it used to represent ‘pp’ and ‘tt’ in the above romaji words.