Osechi Japanese New Year Feast for Tastebuds & Soul

2025 began in a very special way for me 🙏 For the first time, I experienced New Year's Day in Japan and the Japanese tradition of Osechi Ryori or New Year Feast.

Japanese families get together to celebrate the start of the new year and Osechi is at the heart of this special day. I am very touched and grateful for this opportunity to be part of this revered tradition 🙏

Cheers to 2025 🥂

Continuing the Osechi Ryori tradition not only celebrates the New Year with family and friends by sharing food 一味同心 but also binds us with generations of the past. When all Japanese everywhere have an Osechi meal on New Year's Day it binds the Japanese nation past and present as one.

Hold that thought for a moment and imagine how powerful is that.

Osechi Ryori began in the Nara era (710 - 784). Each item in Osechi is rich in symbolism and meaning. In the beginning, it consisted only of humble nishime (food simmered in soy sauce) and kuromame (black soybeans, not black beans).

Savoury sweet nishime dishes are food which is slowly simmered in soy sauce till no liquid remains.

Osechi is prepared on New Year's Eve as a way of sending off the old year and it was taboo to use the hearth and to cook on New Year's Day. So, ingredients had to be gathered weeks ahead. Preparing Osechi takes lots of planning and work, it is an act of love.

Kuromame or sweet black soy beans are part of Osechi Ryori. Both

nishime and kuromame are mainstays of Osechi Ryori, and both require hours of cooking, fitting well into the custom of cooking on New Year's Eve.

In Japanese tradition, the deity Toshigami-sama 年神 who looks after the family joins them at the table during the Osechi meal. Each item in the meal represents our wishes which the deity will bless.

Special chopsticks which are pointed at both ends are used when eating Osechi. The bottom end is for our own use while the top end is for deity Toshigami-sama 年神 who is at the table. We are sharing the Osechi with Toshigami-sama 年神. Imagine the spiritual communion of the meal.

The special chopsticks are made with willow wood which blooms in the spring, thus symbolising renewal and vitality.

Since the Edo period, dishes from different regions of Japan are included in Osechi.

Crunchy, umami savoury kazunoko or herring roe symbolises fertility and prosperity.

Chewy sweet savoury tazukuri or candied dried sardines carry the wish for bountiful harvests and prosperity.

Japanese food historian Ayao Olumura theorised that baby sardines, and herring roe became definitive Osechi items by decree of Shoguns during the Edo period (1603 - 1868). Baby sardines and herring roe were at that time used as fertiliser. The Shoguns wanted to encourage frugality among the people, hence these easily available, affordable, nutritious items. Of course, today herring roe is an expensive delicacy.

Sweet rolled omelette datemaki represents continuous joy and good fortune. As datemaki rolls look like scrolls, they also symbolise knowledge and learning / scholarship.

Zōni 雑煮 New Year mochi soup with fish cake, rice cake, buri (yellowtail), daikon and ikura or salmon eggs. This dish gives thanks for the harvest and prays for bountiful harvest in the new year.

Kamaboko or Japanese fish cake. It was quite firm, gently briny with a subtle fish flavour. The white dish represents purity and a new beginning.

Clean tasting buri bone soup, ikura and premium ingredients such as buri (yellowtail fish).

Namasu or pickled daikon and carrot which represent joy and celebrations with their vibrant colours. Ayako's version had the added touch of silver foil which is a symbol of wealth and good fortune.

Our gracious host Ayako prepared a lot of buri or yellowtail fish dishes for us, starting with buri sashimi 🙏

Buri symbolises strength, growth, progress and success.

Its soft tender sweet flesh is so delicious!

Buri shabu shabu cooked by blanching it in sake 🫢

So delicious, I ate a lot 🤭

Buri sushi with Niigata prefecture's famous koshihikari rice.

Buri head in shoyu, kombu and daikon soup. I coyly asked for the eye, my favourite part for its soft tissue, gelatin and collagen 🤭

The thick soft smooth collagen on the buri's face.

We had buri fish, the symbol of success, in so many forms. I never had so much yellowtail in my life 😄 It makes me feel full of confidence about 2025 😀💪

So much food, we had to wash it down with some sake 日本酒 (Japan's national drink) - thanks buddy YS, our resident sake super enthusiast. I am a sake novice but enjoyed it very much. I like the balanced sweet dry variety. Sake doesn't give me that filling, bloated feeling of beer nor the hangover of whiskey.

Thank you for a beautiful start of 2025 which we enter with new hope, optimism and full of confidence.

Thanks to Yasu and Ayako (right) for sharing this meaningful Osechi tradition with us. Cheers to a great future together.

Our gracious host Ayako is a passionate chef and the CEO of 吉雪 Kissetsu, seafood wholesaler in Honmachi, Ojiya City, Niigata prefecture where it has a physical retail shop.