New Year's

While New Year's Eve may have seemed a little subdued by Western standards, New Years Day is special. While Westerners are nursing hangovers, families across Japan go to their local shrine to pray for a good new year along with other activities to ascertain or bolster one's luck.

I went to a shrine with one of my conversation partners and here's what we did -

First, we went to the main shrine. We each threw in a coin (I have heard that 5 yen coins are the most lucky because they are in the shape of a circle, but my friend told me that a one yen or ten yen coin is fine), clapped our hands twice, prayed, and then bowed to the shrine. After that, we went to get our fortunes told. At many shrines, you can pay 100-200 yen (about a dollar or two) to get your fortune. I have written about this before. There is a wooden box with sticks in it. You roll the box around noisily to mix up the sticks and then you shake the box until one of the sticks comes out the hole in the bottom. You report the number to the booth and they give you a slip of paper with your fortune on it.

The first thing you look for is what level of fortune you get. There are twelve levels of luck you can get ranging from Great Blessing to Great Curse. The fortune then specifies different aspects of your fortune for a variety of areas. Usually there are things like family, travel, work and health - and there can be any number of other categories that can be specified. If you have Great Blessing, the news is basically all good. As you get lower and lower luck, though, you may find some good and some bad, with Great Curse being pretty much all bad. If you get a good fortune and you want to keep it, you take it home with you. If you get a bad fortune, you can tie it to a tree (or conveniently provided strings) in hopes that the bad luck will stay at the tree.

Fortune in hand, we also had the chance to buy some personal protection amulets on the way out. You can get an amulet for health, to improve your studying, to give you strength in competitions, for safe driving, for safe pregnancies, etc. They tend to come as little satchels, sometimes with the name of the shrine where you got it and often with characters indicating what the amulet does.

I also saw a lot of people walking around with decorative arrows. According to Wikipedia, those are a type of amulet to aid in the fight against bad luck. I have only seen them in association with New Year's, though, so far.

In any case, all charged up with good luck, we were ready to take on the new year.

In reality, Russell and I did not quite follow tradition this year. We didn't know what tradition was, yet. We did know that many people would go to their local shrine on New Year's Day, and we knew it would be okay for us to visit as well. We also had a feeling that anywhere we found throngs of people, we would also find food carts and could continue our vigil for roasted sweet potatoes.

So off to the Shrine we went. We were in Nagoya, so we made the trek to Atsuta Shrine. Once we got close we saw many families walking together and the crowd got bigger as we approached the main exit. We also discovered food carts lining the walk to the shrine. Score for breakfast! The Atsuta shrine has quite a lot of space and two entrances - so one had been designated an entrance, and another an exit to help with the flow of people. As we entered we eventually came to a large build-up of people that had come to a complete stop. We were a little nervous because we didn't know what to do at a shrine on New Year's yet and we weren't there with anything who could explain. We tried to follow the crowd, though. As it turned out, the reason everyone was at a stop was to allow the previous throng of people to filter out before the next wave crashed. Once the grounds were starting to thin, a woman with a giant sign asking people to please wait patiently. stepped out of the way and let everyone pour in to the shrine. The central shrine for praying and the out buildings for fortunes and for amulets were nicely spaced to allow for a lot of people to make their way around to all areas without too much jostling. Russell and I stepped aside, watched for a bit, took a picture to show we had been there, and then left. I felt a little sheepish, but it was impressive to see so many people. It was also impressive to see Atsuta shrine. It has spacious grounds and is surrounded by very old trees. The trees give it a very solemn feel I wouldn't expect for a shrine in the middle of such an urban city. It was a nice feeling, though.

The trip I described earlier - the one where I went to the shrine with my conversation partner, actually happened about a week later in Kobe at Ikuta Shrine. So a little late on the good luck, but we should be set now.

Happy New Year!

(Note the first image is of Ikuta Shrine and was taken from Google Images. Imagine it overrun with people.)