Osechi order is in

Last year, Russell and I didn't really know what to expect for New Years. We knew everyone had time off and was going to be with their family. That was about it. Since we had had vacation time to burn, we decided at the last minute to head into Tokyo. It was our first trip north and neither of us had been there. I can't remember our reasoning, but we decided to start trekking home on New Year's Eve. We ended up spending the evening in a hotel in Nagoya. As you may remember from the post last year, New Years is not a party holiday in Japan. It is a quiet day spent with the family visiting the local shrine, praying and eating auspicious treats.

This year, Russell and I are better prepared for New Years.

We learned at some point that families eat "osechi" at New Years. What is osechi? I still can't give a thorough explanation (more will come, I'm sure) but from what I can tell, osechi are a variety of traditional foods that bring different kinds of luck to the eater. For example: Hoping for money in the coming year? Eat a special chestnut yam mash (it has 金 in its name, which alone means "gold"). Hoping to have children? Eat a certain kind of fish egg. General health? Sweetened black soy beans. You get the idea.

While the classic housewife would carefully slave away creating lavish renditions of these annual treats, many modern families now opt to buy a box of the treats. Orders are taken as early as November and prices are - ahem - a little steep. The cheapest box I've seen was about $60 for one person. It seems that about $100 - $150 was the rate for a good osechi box for two. We did see 4 person boxes reach as high as $1,000 (we saw two of those...).

We talked to some friends to see if this was the sort of thing we should make for ourselves or just buy. Since we didn't really know what we were doing, everyone agreed that buying was the best option - at least for the first year. The local high end department store was recommended as a good place to procure osechi.

We found the seasonal osechi corner and started browsing our options. Keep in mind, this is not something you eat until new years. Unlike Christmas pastries, you don't start eating boxes of osechi for weeks before the big day. Instead of displaying actual osechi boxes, the department store had highly elaborate plastic models on display. They really were beautiful. At first we didn't know where to start. Then, we noticed that each box was labeled for the number of people it served and the regional specialties it represented. And of course, we were keeping en eye on price.

We finally settled on a two person box in the Osaka tradition. It had all the osechi musts that my Japanese teacher had taught me about. We took a ticket from the display with the name and number of our choice. We then payed for the box at the osechi table and arranged for it to be delivered (between 4 and 6) on New Year's Eve.

I'm really excited. I promise there will be proud pictures to come.