Wherever you are in Japan, New Year is an enchanting time- crowds in their finest clothes (many of the women wear their best kimonos and fur wraps), throng the shrines and temples which are surrounded by street food hawkers selling all manner of wonders from whole charcoal grilled fish on sticks to ramen..
Figuring that we’re about as close to familiar with Tokyo’s miraculously ordered otherworldliness as we’re going to get, this visit we’ve gone from one extreme to another, swapping the habitual comforts and concierge safety blanket of hotel life for an apartment in Nishiogi (as the suburb of Nishi-Ogikubo is affectionately known). It’s a world way from our familiar downtown haunts, so the three of us are enough of a curiosity in this tourist-free zone for almost every local we meet to want to mother or father us, as we try to negotiate a cityscape almost entirely devoid of non Kanji or Hiragana signage (Japanese script). Fortunately our flat is right by the railway station with its treasure trove of restaurants and food stores, so there is no danger of us getting lost, but navigating the intricacies of the apartment building’s trash disposal system (there are at least a half dozen different bins), as we had to do yesterday under the beady, admonishing gaze of the octogenarian lady next door, was yet another bracing lesson in Japanese etiquette.
Having done little more than cursorily glancing at the map of Greater Tokyo before booking this place, we discover that Nishiogi has a rich and checkered past, starting life as a cluster of second homes for downtown Tokyo’s wealthy. It later became the main antiques district in Greater Tokyo as these homeowners traded in their art and furniture in the aftermath of World War II, then Tokyo’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s as the city’s counter cultural and civil disobedience gathering point and even today Nishiogi has the highest concentration of organic and vegetarian restaurants in the city. Even better, it’s just a few stops on the Chuo Line west of the luminescent wonderscape of Shinjuku, and dangerously close to Sabrina and our teenage daughter’s clothes shopping magnet of Harajuku, in Shibuya.
We join the throng on Takeshita-dori in Harajuku, for the weekly Sunday Fashion tribes and Cosplay gathering and our daughter expertly navigates the main tribal factions ‘Gothoholics’, ‘Home Gals’ and ‘Center Guys’ which seem inflected this year with a strong Hip hop flavour, to find her own set of fashion must haves. Even I (normally a shopping grinch), get in on the act as we rendezvous at the irresistibly sleek Laforet store on Omotesando Street. Both Sabrina and our daughter also try their hands with ‘Lucky Bags’ (Fukubukuro), a New Year’s tradition where you buy a sealed bag of mystery fashion and cosmetic items. These are gleefully opened at the Robitayaki restaurant where we take shelter from a sudden freezing downpour and warm up with saké and barbecued chicken hearts, beef, prawns, scallops and vegetables on our own table grill, re-emerging into the polite, good humoured crush under neon lights.
Having already visited many of Tokyo’s shrines and temples we decide on a whim on New Year’s Eve to join the mass pilgrimage to Nikkō’s Tōshōgū Shrine, Japan’s most visited. In any other country on earth this spontaneity would be an act of complete madness with mass transit grinding to a halt, but here despite the press of the crowds all is calm and collected and we navigate the two hour train journey to the mountainside town with relative ease.
Surrounded by a grove of massive cedars and glowing in the softly falling snow with its two and a half million sheets of gold leaf and huge volumes of red lacquer, this 17th century memorial to Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which is almost Trump-like in its gaudiness, is the polar opposite of the austere simplicity of most shrines. In an ironic touch, a procession of monks files solemnly past as we are viewing the shrine’s most famous carving, the three wise monkeys.
Cold and hungry, we take shelter in a tiny one room café serving the single dish of Soba with wild mountain greens, before the long walk back to town, crossing the red lacquered span of Nikko’s sacred Shinkyo bridge, a landmark depicted in countless woodblock prints dating back to the 19th century.
Back at the apartment, we briefly contemplate rugging up once again to see in the New Year at our nearest temple with the ringing of 108 bells, (one ring for each of the worldly desires or anxieties central to Buddhism), which starts in the old year and finishes right as the clock strikes midnight. Having done this a couple of years back in Kyoto. we opt instead for a cosier Japanese New Year’s Eve tradition, the TV game show marathon ‘Zettai ni Waratte wa Ikenai’ (Absolutely no laughing), where competitors are whacked with a bat if they can’t keep a straight face.
Hatsumöde is the very first visit to a temple or shrine in the New Year to thank the gods for the year that has just ended and to ask for their protection for the one that is just beginning. Many travel hundreds of miles for this tradition, with the hardiest taking specially laid on trains in the early hours to watch the sunrise, so our 90 minute mid-morning shinkansen to Nagano in Japan’s Alps is a soft option.
Snowflakes settle soundlessly on unfurled umbrellas as we join the column inching slowly towards the austerely handsome Zenko-ji Temple complex to make their offerings and to line up to earn a ‘ticket to heaven’ by feeling their way down a narrow passageway in total darkness until they touch the ‘key of paradise’. The freezing cold wait is too long for this latter ritual, but I do buy a ‘Good Luck in Business’ token and we tie our white fortune papers to the already festooned tree near the temple’s entrance. Fortunately, the food vendors keep us just warm enough with Yakisoba Noodles and sweet red bean mochi, to make it to the temple for the ringing of the bell.
Yakisoba: Serves Six
2 pkts yakisoba noodles ( serves 6)
1 whole pork tenderloin, thinly sliced
Small bunch of Nira ( Chinese garlic chives), cut into 1 1/2 ” lengths
1/4 Napa cabbage, cut into 1″ pieces
2 Carrots, cut into 1 1/2″ match sticks
1 medium onion, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
In a very large fry pan or wok, heat 2 tablespoons of oil, add the onion and carrots, cook until fragrant, add the pork and a pinch of salt; cook until the pork is almost done. Add the cabbage and the nira, toss to combine, cooking until the vegetables are done. Remove to a dish, add 2 tablespoons of oil in the same pan and 3/4 cup of water; then add the noodles. Using chopsticks loosen the noodles, return the pork and vegetables to the pan, gently stir-fry, making sure not break up the noodles too much. Make a mixture of the 2 sauces together, pour over the noodles and toss to combine. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Leaving the temple grounds to catch our train we pass rows of red capped and bibbed Jizo statues. Dedicated to children and travellers in this world and the next, they are a poignant and sober reminder of how lucky we are to be here for this beautiful and peaceful start to the New Year.
Oh how I want to go to Japan! I’m obsessed with the food, the fashion, the quirkiness…
I love the idea of the “lucky bags”… right up my street. I have made a note of the noodle dish- I am making this for sure. Happy New Year, Marco and Sabrina! Here’s to many more adventures ahead :-))
Another beautifully evocative account to start the New Year! You certainly know how to inspire Wanderlust!