🍱 Toshi-tori Zen/Toshi-tori Zen/Toshi-koshi Ryori (New Year s Eve Feast)

On the night of New Year's Eve, the family gathers together to enjoy a lavish meal served on a high table tray to welcome the New Year. It is the time when 'Toshi-tori Zen' is eaten. The same dish is served as an offeriing to thank the Toshigami (the god celebrated at the beginning of the New Year) for a year of good health and to welcome the new Toshigami. On New Year's Eve, people stay up from midnight until dawn to celebrate and go and pay their respects at shrines and temples. On New Year's Day, breakfast is served with zoni (a soup containing rice cakes and vegetables), but it is customary to do as little housework and cooking as possible, eating the leftovers from the previous night and quietly celebrating the beginning of the new year. Some areas still retain this custom today. This custom is an old way of welcoming the New Year and dates back to the days when the lunar calendar was used. According to the old calendar, the day began after sunset, so the new year was celebrated whereby New Year's Day began from the evening of New Year's Eve. In those days, age was expressed by counting the year of birth as being one years old, so by celebrating New Year's Day, one more year was added to one's age. No doubt it must have been some special New Year's dish, as it was used to rejoice in growing one year older as a family, and to welcome the god of the year and the New Year.