It is also traditional to eat mochi (rice cake) dishes on New Year's Days. I wrote more about mochi in my feature about . Zouni (rice cake soup) is the most popular mochi dish at this time. The ingredients vary depending on regions and families. If you are lucky, you can taste many different zouni. In my family, zouni is usually soy-sauce based with pieces of chicken, Chinese cabbage, carrot, green onion, and daikon radishes.
It is traditional for Japanese people to visit to a shrine or a temple during New Year's Days. People pray for safety, health and good fortune. The first visit to a temple or shrine in a year is called Hatsumoude. It is not a very religious event but rather a custom. You can go any shrine or temple near you for Hatsumoude. Many well-known temples and shrines are extremely crowded. For example, Tokyo Meiji Jinguu, Kanagawa Kawasaki Taisya, Chiba Naritasan, Nagoya Atsuta Jinguu are very popular and expect a couple million visitors during New Year's Days each year. If you want to visit one of the famous shrines or temples, be aware of pickpockets.
Since most businesses are closed during the first three days of the year, the streets tend to be quiet except for those near shrines and temples. Nowadays, it is common for many department stores to hold New Year's special sales at this time. So, you see many shoppers in the street too. Some products are discounted a lot, so it might be worth it to check the prices out if you have shopping needs. Good luck!
Japanese New Year's Decoration
The Taste of Tokyo
Much of what we now know as the unique Tokyo taste has been handed down since the days when Tokyo was called Edo. Edo's tastes are called Edo-mae in Japanese cuisine, and refer to food made with fish caught in Tokyo Bay. When Ieyasu Tokugawa established the shogunate in Edo in 1603, Edo-mae began to develop as the cooking of what were then Tokyo's inner city neighborhoods and continues even today. Representative of this cuisine are items like sushi, tempura, soba noodles, oden, and grilled eel, as well as dishes, such as loach stew made with fish caught in Edo's rivers and irrigation canals. Tempura is said to derive from a Portuguese word, either tenporanore or tenpolas. Grilled Eel, known as kabayaki in Japanese, requires a long apprenticeship before a cook can be considered a master. Sushi is said to have started at Honjo Yokoami (current Sumida-Ward) in 1810. This style of sushi is today known as Edo-mae-zushi. Soba has been a well-loved food of Edo residents since the late seventeenth century. It is said to be one of the true tastes of old Edo. Oden, or a hotpot of stewed fishcake, boiled eggs and other ingredients, originated in Edo roughly around the year 1850. There are also several dishes made with river fish, but we'll leave you with the above list as an introduction to Tokyo cuisine.