Happy New Year!
The New Year is the most important holiday for Japanese. Many companies and schools are closed for one week or more during this season and most Japanese return hometowns and spend the holidays with their families, joining together for traditional New Year’s dishes called osechi.
Osechi are specially prepared New Year’s dishes to be eaten during the New Year holidays. Although the ingredients depend on the region and home, each food has a special meaning associated with good luck.
For example black beans, kuro(black)-mame(beans) in Japanese are for health and working hard because “mame” is a homonym of a word means healthy and working hard, and prawns are for longevity because their bodies are bent like an old person’s.
In my family’s home, we enjoyed a delicious grilled whole sea bream with head and tail prepared with Italian style, sushi as well as osechi. I had to forget to leave off with an appetite for my health!