Traditional Food
Japanese people eat a special selection of dishes during the New Year celebration called osechi-ryōri (御節料理 or お節料理?), typically shortened to osechi. This consists of boiled seaweed (昆布, konbu?), fish cakes (蒲鉾, kamaboko?), mashed sweet potato with chestnut (栗きんとん, kurikinton?), simmered burdock root (金平牛蒡, kinpira gobō?), and sweetened black soybeans (黒豆, kuromame?). Many of these dishes are sweet, sour, or dried, so they can keep without refrigeration—the culinary traditions date to a time before households had refrigerators, when most stores closed for the holidays. There are many variations of osechi, and some foods eaten in one region are not eaten in other places (or are considered unfortunate or even banned) on New Year's Day. Another popular dish is ozōni (お雑煮?), a soup with mochi rice cake and other ingredients that differ based on various regions of Japan. Today, sashimi and sushi are often eaten, as well as non-Japanese foods. To let the overworked stomach rest, seven-herb rice soup (七草粥, nanakusa-gayu?) is prepared on the seventh day of January, a day known as jinjitsu (人日?).
Read more about this topic: Japanese New Year
Famous quotes containing the words traditional and/or food:
“The traditional husband/father has always made choices concerning career, life-styles, values, and directions for the whole family, but he generally had another person on the team—called a wife. And his duties were always clear: Bring home the bacon and take out the garbage.”
—Donna N. Douglass (20th century)
“Would mankind be but contented without the continual use of that little but significant pronoun “mine” or “my own,” with what luxurious delight might they revel in the property of others!... But if envy makes me sicken at the sight of everything that is excellent out of my own possession, then will the sweetest food be sharp as vinegar, and every beauty will in my depraved eyes appear as deformity.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)