Where I Belong

Today’s coffee: Valentine’s blend (but I’m still drinking New Year’s blend at home)

It seems like ages since New Year’s Day, and at the same time, it seems like no time has passed at all, as if I were just opening my jū-bako to show off this year’s osechi to Keith. But since it is still January, Happy New Year! 今年も宜しくお願い致します (Please be kind to me this year too.)

Osechi, the traditional Japanese New Year’s feast, is the most complicated and labor-intensive meal of the year. I spend a day planning, half a day shopping, two or three days cooking, and then about two hours arranging the food in a three-tiered lacquered box (jū-bako). There’s a word in Japanese describing an undertaking like this one: 面倒くさい (mendō-kusai), which literally means “stinks of trouble.” The benefit of all this work is that we eat it for days. Traditionally it’s three days, but with only two of us, it lasts at least a week, until we’ve had enough, but it’s still not gone. “Maybe you should make smaller batches next time,” suggested Keith.

Filling the boxes...

Step by step, as each item goes in

This year included, I’ve made the full-on osechi meal six times. The first time, in 2010, I could barely read Japanese; I was saved by the step-by-step instructions with pictures in my osechi cookbook. Some of the ingredients and cooking techniques didn’t even show up in my dictionary, so a lot of guesswork was involved. This year I didn’t use a dictionary at all, since my cooking obsession gave me the motivation to learn all that complicated vocabulary and more. Keith says our osechi gets better every year with practice, but he’s probably also getting accustomed to the taste.

As I made grocery lists and translated recipes and shopped for expensive ingredients this year, part of me wondered why on earth I put myself through this rigmarole (almost) every year. It’s tasty, but perhaps not three-days-of-solid-work tasty. Hardly any of my Japanese friends even do this; if they eat osechi (it’s kind of old-fashioned), they order it from a department store or restaurant. So why?

I suppose it’s the same reason I eat turkey and all the fixings on Thanksgiving Day, despite it not being a holiday here, and despite the trouble and expense of getting all those imported ingredients. It’s because back home, all my family and friends are eating turkey and sharing around the table what they are thankful for. When I eat the same meal and give thanks with my friends here, even in Japan, it’s like I’m affirming that even with the ocean dividing us, I still belong to my family and to the community in which I grew up.

By making and eating Toshi-koshi soba (year-crossing soba) on New Year’s Eve, osechi and ozōni (soup with mochi) on New Year’s Day, nanakusa-gayu (seven-greens rice porridge) on January 7, and so on, I remind myself that I belong here too, to this place and to these people.

Each of the foods in the osechi feast symbolize a hope for the coming year: red and white foods expressing the festivity of a fresh start, tiny fish for fruitfulness, beans for the ability to work hard (a wordplay in Japanese), kombu rolls for joy (also a wordplay), lotus root (which has holes) for clear-sightedness, taro root cut into turtle shape for longevity, yellow foods for prosperity, and so on. I eat these foods together with my friends here as I share their same hopes and prayers.

This is comforting, when so often I feel out of place and out of my depth, and sometimes I don’t even want to belong. But God brought me here and joined me to this community also; I affirm this by my feasting.

It’s no wonder, since I also experience my deepest belonging by feasting at the Table of Tables—and this sense of belonging informs and deepens the others as heaven and earth are joined together. I belong here and everywhere God is honored.