Food -- New Year's Day

Recently, I taught my 11th grade students a reading lesson with a text describing New Year's customs in various countries. One of the things that the reading said about New Year's in the U.S. was that Americans often make resolutions and that the most common was to lose weight. I think that's probably true, and I think that, as a result, there's a lot of serious low-fat, low quantity, low alcohol consumption going on January 1st.

Japan, as in so many things, is the polar opposite of America. It's 9 a.m. January 1st and, as I type this, all over Japan, people are getting ready for three days of binge eating, sometimes inaugurated (right about now) by a healthy (?) swig of sake laced with flecks of gold.

My hatsu-yume (first dream of the new year) was about food. I just before I definitively woke up about 7:30, I dreamed that my wife took two big lobsters out of a pot of water, plopped them down on the kitchen table, and started cutting them up into manageable pieces while I hurried to clear papers and the other assorted junk that usually decorates our table out of harm's way.

The hatsu-yume, like hatsu ("first") everything else, is a big deal in Japanese New Year's tradition. The good luck dreams are Mt. Fuji (big and beautiful), a hawk (powerful), and an eggplant (go figure). I guess lobsters represent the ability to buy expensive food, which suggests good luck, unless you're the lobster. (You know the one about the Zen master killing a fly?)

More later . . .