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Ōmisoka (大晦日) or ōtsugomori (大晦) is a Japanese traditional celebration on the last day of the year. Traditionally, it was held on the final day of the 12th lunar month. With Japan's switch to using the Gregorian calendar at the beginning of the Meiji era, it is now used on New Year's Eve to celebrate the new year.
A bōnenkai (忘年会, literally "forget the year gathering") is a Japanese drinking party that takes place at the end of the year and is generally held among groups of co-workers or friends. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The purpose of the party, as its name implies, is to forget the woes and troubles of the past year, and hopefully look to the new year ...
There is a traditional Japanese custom of exchanging end-of-year greetings, and preparing for the New Year by the end of December with a sentiment of hoping for a "auspicious start" to the year. This concept resonated well with this sentiment and quickly spread nationwide.
A lazy greeting is regarded with the type of disdain that would accompany a limp handshake in parts of the West. The most common greetings are ohayō gozaimasu (おはようございます) or "good morning", used until about 11:00 a.m. but may be used at any time of day.
Japanese calendar types have included a range of official and unofficial systems. At present, Japan uses the Gregorian calendar together with year designations stating the year of the reign of the current Emperor. [1] The written form starts with the year, then the month and finally the day, coinciding with the ISO 8601 standard.
Nengajō, new year cards in Japan. The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest for Japanese post offices. The Japanese have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcards (年賀状, nengajō) to their friends and relatives, similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. The original purpose was to give faraway ...
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Japanese commonly use proverbs, often citing just the first part of common phrases for brevity. For example, one might say i no naka no kawazu (井の中の蛙, 'a frog in a well') to refer to the proverb i no naka no kawazu, taikai o shirazu (井の中の蛙、大海を知らず, 'a frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean').