Happy New Year and akemashite omedetou gozaimasu from your friends in Japan! We hope that 2016 is filled with many awesome and fun memories.
The arrival of a new year is a special time in Japan, an excuse to start the year off right by doing as little as possible, relaxing around the house with your legs inside the kotatsu while eating mikan oranges and watching the New Year’s marathon on the TV. The entire country shuts down for three days, as businesses give their employees extra days off to spend with family. As with any holiday, there’s a highly developed food culture around New Year’s in Japan, with traditional food called osechi which can be kept at room temperature without going bad for several days, enabling the women of the house to take a break from cooking…though truth be told, even after 24 years here I’m not able to eat many of these traditional foods. One New Year’s food I do love is mochi, compressed squares of glutinous white rice that are delicious…but can also be deadly, since they’re so sticky they can choke children or the elderly if they’re not supervised while eating. Sure enough, an 83-year woman died by choking on mochi cakes, and 11 others were hospitalized over the holidays.
Another fun symbol of New Year’s in Japan are 福袋 fuku-bukuro, translated as Lucky Bags in English. The modern custom of businesses selling grab bags filled with random merchandise got started around the beginning of the 20th century, when a department store chain called Matsuzaka-ya in Tokyo started promoting the idea of buying the bags on the way home from visiting a Shinto shrine to pray for good luck in the new year. Fukubukuro are so popular, it’s not rare of for hundreds of people to line up outside shops to buy, though some of this is related to the odd love the Japanese have of lining up for stuff. If you’d like to get in on this fuku-bukuro action, J-List has some great grab bags in stock this year, including Japanese snacks, toy/figures, kawaii/fashion, doki doki random and several “naughty” grab bags. Browse now!
J-List is starting off the new year with some great news: Sonicomi: Communication with Sonico, the English version of the hit game from Nitroplus. Sonico is a charming and pretty college student and amateur musician who’s making her modeling debut. You interact with Sonico, and actually take 3D photography of her in real-time! Visit the official site or visit the product preorder paga right now (you get 10% off!).
