Hello there!
Welcome back to another article for you to practice your reading skills. I’m very happy to see you here again. 🙂
FIRST OF ALL, I would like to wish you a Happy New Year. May 2025 be an amazing year for you, FILLED WITH love, peace, happiness, and lots of opportunities to learn and develop your KNOWLEDGE and skills!
The vocabulary I want you to learn in in CAPITAL LETTERS. 😉
Enjoy the read!
December 29th
On December 29th, we started to DEEP CLEAN our home here in Osaka.
Deep cleaning the house a few days before the New Year’s celebrations was (and continues to be) part of the routine in my mom’s house in Brazil.
That’s especially because my mom always HAS FRIENDS OVER to celebrate the New Year’s, and we want the house to be SPOTLESS for them. BESIDES THAT, we also do it because we enjoy starting the New Year with everything clean and organized at home.
Osoji – a Japanese tradition
Here in Japan, my husband also used to do it before getting married because Japanese people have a strong tradition of deep cleaning the house at the end of the year. It is called Osoji in Japanese. The Japanese people do it to welcome the SACRED SPIRITS (kami, in Japanese), who bring BLESSINGS to their homes when they visit at New Year’s.
So, yeah, that’s what we did for 2 days. Our home is quite minimalist, so it was not very difficult to do it. But because this time we cleaned places that we usually don’t clean during the year, like behind the fridge and the light fixtures, IT TOOK US two full days to do it.
December 31st
Friends coming over
We were expecting two friends to COME OVER to SPEND NEW YEAR’S with us, and SINCE one of them WAS SUPPOSED TO come from Tokyo in the morning, we woke up early to meet him at the train station.
We got up at 6:00, and just after brushing my teeth I took my phone to see if there were any messages for me. To my surprise, there was one from that friends. He had sent it at 5:30 a.m. saying that he HAD THE FLU. He said that he was feeling AWFUL, so he wouldn’t be able to join us.
We were looking forward to hosting him in our home (it was going to be his first visit to our home here in Osaka), and seeing that message frustrated us. But when we VIDEO CALLED him and saw his state, we understood that he was not exaggerating. Poor thing, he HAD A FEVER, his voice was very HOARSE, and he was COUGHING a lot.
He needed to rest to recover and we also didn’t want to CATCH THE FLU, so we decided to POSTPONE his visit to when he would be completely recovered.
Our other friend came by car from her hometown, which is around two hours from here. She arrived around 4:00 p.m.
She is Brazilian, but she moved to Japan with her parents when she was just 1 year old. For me, she’s 50% Brazilian and 50% Japanese. What an amazing mix!
She brought some delicious snacks for us to have with coffee in the afternoon, and also KALE, which I had asked her to buy because I can’t find kale here in Osaka, and she can find it in a Brazilian market in her town.
Dinner
My plan was to make a simple but delicious dinner with Brazilian dishes for our friends. As our friend from Tokyo (actually, he is Korean but he lives in Tokyo) had never eaten kale or LENTILS, I decided to include SAUTÉED KALE with garlic and LENTIL STEW in the menu for him to try.
Unfortunately, he was not here with us, so he couldn’t try those dishes then, but I saved some ingredients to make them again when he came.
What was surprsing to me was that our Brazilian friend had never eaten lentil stew EITHER. She told it to me when we were in the kitchen preparing the ingredients to make dinner. I was shocked haha. But knowing that made me super happy. AT LEAST someone would be introduced to lentil stew that night.
AND YOU KNOW WHAT? She loved it! I made it with MUSHROOMS and caramelized onions INSTEAD OF meat, because I was making a vegan dinner, and, modesty aside, it was delicious!
Going to a Shintoist shrine
Around 10:00 p.m., we decided to go to a SHRINE and join the other Japanese people in the prayers for a good new year. My husband Shinya used to do that, but our Brazilian friend had never been to a shrine on New Year’s Eve because her family is protestant and they never FELT LIKE doing that. She was excited to see WHAT IT WAS LIKE.
I had already experienced going to a shrine on New Year’s Eve in 2023, but I went to a small shrine near my home. I didn’t know what it was like to go to a famous one. We decided to go to Sumiyoshi Taisha, which is one of the most famous shrines here in Osaka.
We BUNDLED OURSELVES UP because it was freezing outside and left. Our friend drove us to the shrine and we PARKED in a PARKING LOT a little far from the shrine because we expected that all the other parking lots nearer the shrine would be full.
On our walk from the parking lot to the shrine, we expected to encounter many people doing the same, but we BARELY saw anyone, EVEN THOUGH our walk was not very short. We walked for around 10 minutes. Once we reached the temple walls, I thought that maybe there wouldn’t be many people inside because it was pretty silent outside.
However, when we TURNED THE CORNER and GOT TO the entrance, we realized that there were actually a lot of people there. And even more arrived around midnight.
All those people were there to pray and make their wishes for the new year, DRAW FORTUNE SLIPS (omikuji, in Japanese) to learn about their fortune for the new year in different areas of their lives, and buy LUCKY CHARMS to protect them or bring them good luck.
The temple was beautiful with all the paper lanters lit with yellow lights. It was nice to see everyone having fun and praying. It was a PEACEFUL and CHEERFUL ENVIRONMENT.
We also drew our fortune slips (my husband’s was the best one), and our friend bought a few lucky charms. My husband and I decided to keep our fortune slips, but our friend decided to TIE hers on a ROPE at the shire together with many other fortune slips because it was not really positive.
When people draw not-so-positive fortune slips, they tie them somewhere at the shrine and some days later the PRIESTS of the shrine would pray and then burn those fortune slips.
Japanese religions/ traditions
In Japan, there are two main religions: Shintoism and Buddhism. The FORMER is an indigenous religion of Japan, and the LATTER was brought here from abroad. What I like about Shintoism is that it WORSHIPS the nature. That’s why you usually see lots of trees in shrines in the middle of the city and find TENS OF THOUSANDS of shrines in the forests.
In Shintoism, it’s believed that sacred spirits/DEITIES inhabit natural elements such as trees, rocks, waterfalls, mountains, rivers, and etc. Mount Fuji, for example, is considered sacred because it is believed that it houses a kami (sacred spirit). I love that connection with nature in Shintoism!
That really RELATES WITH my favorite way of connecting with the spiritual world. I feel much more connected with God and the spiritual world while hiking on a mountain than praying in a church or temple.
When the clock struck midnight
By the time the clock struck midnight, the temple was packed with people. There were security guards around and they blocked the way to the temple for a while to control the CROWD inside.
Most people were waiting to pray in front of the main building of the temple. The LINE was huge!
As I don’t like to be in the middle of big crowds, I suggested that we walked to a less crowded area of the temple grounds, and there we waited for midnight.
At midnight, we heard people CHEERING – it was finally 2025.
There was no DISPLAY OF FIREWORKS, but we heard a DRUM being played in the distance. Fireworks are not traditionally displayed at New Year’s here in Japan. ON THE OTHER HAND, there are many firework displays in the summer.
I think that firework displays are super beautiful but, unfortunately, THEY CAUSE MORE HARM THAN GOOD. It scares the animals TO THE POINT OF even killing them. They also scare babies, elderly people, and people with MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS.
For that reason, I think IT’S HIGH TIME that we do something about it. Either we find a way of making silent fireworks or we should stop using them ALTOGETHER.
Going back home
After we HUGGED and wished each other a happy New Year, we decided to come back home. We got home around 12:30, and, as we were already very tired and sleepy, we decided to get ready for bed. We had a shower, brushed our teeth, and went straight to bed.
The next day, our friend said that she had tried to write in her journal a little before going to sleep, but it was too difficult, haha. My husband and I FELL ASLEEP in less than 5 minutes haha.
2025
We are in 2025. It feels that time is passing too fast. I can remember very well the New Year’s celebrations of 2000, and now, we are 25 years later! It doesn’t feel like that much time has passed, but it has.
That makes me realize that life is actually quite short and an year is a significant portion of a person’s life. For that reason, we need to BE MINDFUL OF how we spend our time – our 365 days of 2025.
I wish that your 2025 is a year in which you are always reminded of how precious your time is and that this thought helps you make the most of it. Happy 2025!
Now, it’s over to you
Let’s practice your writing skills, shall we? Write in the comments section below how you spent your New Year’s. I’m looking forward to reading your comment.
Have you read the article I wrote about the reasons why everybody is getting sick? No? So read it here.
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