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Mr. Kieu Viet Ha
HN Building Department
OVC Joining Date: June 2005
Training period: from August 2017 to September 2018
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The same as Vietnam, there are a lot of customs and rituals for Tet holiday in Japan, New Year's Day (Hatsumoude初詣) is one of them.
From the midnight of December 31, people go to the Shrines or Buddhist temples, the crowd stand in line ready for the prayer PRECISELY at the turning moment of New Year's Eve, this is also a total of 108 times the bell ringing (called jouya-no-kane 除 夜 の 鐘), 108 echoes on Eve to purge all the sins, human error in the old year, in the view of Buddhism. Many visits keep going on the next days.
Washing your hands before entering prayer is a necessary ritual to cleanse your soul and show respect for the GODS. Usually the Japanese will wash their left hand, then the right one and use their left hand to wash their mouth.
Be here, people will come to the altar, toss the coin into the lucky box, bow their heads twice, clap their hands twice and pray themselves and their families for the best. Any coin can be used, but 5 yen is a very popular currency because the pronunciation of 5 Yen is the same as "grace" (ご 縁), which brings luck in the new year.
Before leaving, people always buy new year mascot (called omamori - お 守 り), to pray for good luck or often throw cast, omikuji (お み く じ), to predict how much lucky they have in a year. If the kyō (吉) is not good, it is folded, and hanging on the tree or the wooden floor in the temple to ask for the gods to remove.
At present, Japan has about 84 million of Buddhists and every year 75 thousand of Buddhist temples welcome tens of millions of visitors.
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