Category: Traditional

For many Japanese people the most interesting thing about the beginning of a new year is not the last seconds of the former year but to enjoy a first beautiful dawn in the new year. Here, the night of the 31st of December is quite quiet compared to other places in the world; the most important thing is the next three days: seeing the first dawn of the year, having lunch with the family, decorating houses and companies with kadomatsu and making the first visit of the year to a Shintoist temple.

This year, the Japanese airline JAL, chartered a special flight the dawn of the 1st day of the year 2011 to enjoy the first dawn of the year over Mount Fuji. This is one the pictures that were taken from the plane:

Sunrise over Mount Fuji

Photo by Mainichi

In Buddhist temples you can usually find Buddhist bells that are played by striking them with a tree trunk that hangs horizontally from ropes. In New Year’s eve the bells are played 108 times. According to Buddhist tradition humans only have 108 desires and passions, and each bell stroke helps us release the burden of one of those desires. Some Buddhist temples have stairs with 108 steps; those steps represent the 108 human passions that we can’t escape from.

In the TV show lost the button in the Dharma hatch had to be pressed every 108 minutes.