With Valentine’s Day coming soon, it always makes me wish I were living in Japan again, where the guys don’t have to worry about what romantic thing we need to do for our significant others—because the girls make the first move on Valentine’s Day. In Japan, the girls buy the chocolate for the men. And we don’t have to reciprocate until a month later on “White Day”. Confused? Don’t be—it’s actually kind of…uh, sweet. Valentine’s Day gives the girls a chance to show their crushes how they really feel, when they may normally be too embarrassed to do so. In addition to buying chocolate for their true loves, however, the girls are unfortunately on the hook for buying for their bosses or colleagues—the “obligation chocolate”. And the obligation-giving continues on March 14th for the men, when they’re expected to repay the Valentine’s Day gifts with chocolate gifts of their own, on White Day. Oh, those evil candy manufacturers, who started this ingenious holiday! Even though “White Day” is strictly a commercial money maker, I love the Japanese Valentine’s Day tradition of the girls taking the initiative!

The Japanese love to adopt our national holidays—they’re not always celebrated in the same way, but they do a pretty good job. And it’s always in good fun.

What’s Christmas like in Japan?

There’s no way Christmas would have the same religious significance in Japan the way it does here. It’s estimated only 1% of the population is actually Christian. But Christmas is a joyous time, and Japanese people love gift giving, so it seems pretty natural. The main symbolic gesture has always been the traditional “Christmas Cake”, usually topped with all the decorations, like plastic Santas, trees, reindeer and ornaments. And happily, that rude association with unmarried women being past their expiration date (25, as in December 25) and being called “Christmas Cakes”, is no longer taken seriously. Especially when more women are in the workforce and the marrying age is probably closer to 29.

Another phenomenon is the KFC® Christmas, a brilliant marketing angle invented years ago by a Japanese executive at Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan. He simply started promoting his chicken in Christmas themed barrels, getting his inspiration from the traditional holiday turkey dinners in the U.S. The idea that “Christmas is for Kentucky” caught on, and now standing in long lines to pick up KFC® has become synonymous with the season. Who woulda thought it? The Colonel is the most famous personality during Christmastime. And well deserved, that Japanese executive eventually became the CEO of KFC® Japan.

Halloween is picking up steam

Indeed, this very American holiday becomes bigger every year in Japan, and much like its popularity as an adult holiday here, Halloween in Japan is an excuse to dress up and be someone else. It makes sense that it would catch on in Japan, where cosplay first started. So when they start making costumes, they go all out. It also helps when all the major theme parks like Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan get on the bandwagon and start to feature the holiday in a big way. It used to be a scattering of American ex-pats dressing up and going to bars and nightclubs to be gawked at by curious onlookers—but no more; the dressing up part has been completely adopted by Japanese pop culture. The only thing missing is trick or treat—that part of the tradition doesn’t look like it’s going to assimilated anytime soon.

And what would Halloween be without controversy? Apparently at Universal Studios Japan last year, their new attraction, called “Tatari: Curse of the Living Doll”, drew letters of protest from the Japanese Doll Association, for using dolls that were donated to the park by a shrine. The association wasn’t keen on how the dolls were being represented as objects of terror, even though it was in the spirit of Halloween. Guess what? Dolls are creepy enough sometimes. These little ones are pretty scary with the right makeup!

Japan has pretty much made these holidays their own. Americans might say they’re copycats, and they certainly started that way, but after all these years the celebrations have evolved into something distinctly Japanese.

Images: Valentine art, Christmas cake, KFC, Halloween costumes, Tatari doll

I can actually remember visiting my grandfather during New Year’s when I lived in Japan, and watching him make mochi the old fashioned way—by pounding the heck out of it. He was a strawberry farmer in rural Hiroshima, so maybe he did a lot of things the old fashioned way. But sometimes tradition beats technology every time, and even though you can buy mochi anywhere these days, you can’t celebrate the New Year without it if you’re Japanese.

Mochi is for good luck, a long life and is the symbol of an auspicious new beginning to a fresh calendar year. Yikes! With 2016 trashed, we need all the help we can get this year—yoroshiku onegai shimasu, mochi! The stack of mochi you see above is called kagami mochi, which you’ll find adorning most households during the New Year. Usually two flattened mochi cakes topped with a mandarin orange, this is an offering to the Gods to bring good fortune and protection to the household. The orange is supposed to be of a variety called daidai, a bitter orange that, once its tree bears fruit, doesn’t drop for 2 or 3 years; hence representing long life. Sometimes the decoration is trimmed with dried sea kelp (konbu), dried persimmons, folded ornamental paper and set on a wooden stand, like you see below. The display is usually set up at the family altar in the house, a Buddhist shrine that honors the deceased.

Mochi appears in so many ways during New Year’s—one of my favorites was my mother’s ozoni, a hot soup made of clear dashi stock, sometimes with miso depending on the regional recipe, and all kinds of possible ingredients including Chinese cabbage, carrots, spinach, fishcakes, etc., but always, always with mochi. The best ozoni IMHO, is the one on the morning of January 1st. You’ve had the one on New Year’s Eve when it’s just been cooked, then the following morning all the mochi is soft and gooey and the soup is thick and tasty! On a cold winter morning, it doesn’t get any better!

There are variations of simple grilled mochi cakes called yakimochi, where lightly charred pieces are dipped in soy sauce, or topped with grated daikon radish and soy sauce, or boiled and dusted with kinako, a sweet roasted soybean flour. The best part of grilling mochi? Watching it heat up until it magically expands, swells, and breaks open with a puff of steam as the insides burst out in a bubble. That’s when it’s done! Check out this excellent video by the ladies of Japanese Cooking 101 as they explain how to yakimochi.

And there’s dessert! The warming, sweet soup of oshiruko, a red bean and mochi dish, is a New Year treat that is a favorite of the girls and anybody with a very sweet tooth. The red bean paste (anko) can be either koshi-an (completely smooth) or tsubu-an (partially mashed) and the mochi is often toasted or grilled before adding it to the oshiruko soup. It’s a very simple, comfort food that is easily made these days just by diluting canned red bean paste in hot water. Mochi is what makes it a New Year!

One thing about Japanese culture—it’s always been about the old and the new. Pop culture co-exists everyday alongside traditions that are literally centuries old. But the New Year seems to be the one time of year where everyone, young and old alike, gets together to celebrate what it really means to be Japanese. For your entertainment, if you haven’t seen this video yet, is the world’s fastest mochi pounding man ever.

photo credits: Matcha Magazine, Rakuten Travel, Japanese Cooking 101, Xin Li’s Journal, The Great Big Story