Happy New Year!

It is a tradition in Japan to celebrate New Year's Day with family, and with a variety of special New Year's Day food called "Osechi". 

Since it is quite difficult to obtain ingredients for these special dishes in Bloomington (they are rare and much more expensive than buying them in Japan), and also because it takes really a long time to cook everything (there are basically about 10-20 different kinds of dishes for Osechi, and each dish has a special good luck meaning), I was almost going to give up cooking any Osechi this year.  (Last year I cooked only a few kinds of Osechi, but unfortunately they didn't impress Amar much for some reasons...)

But this year I had a good idea.  I proposed to several Japanese friends of mine in this town an idea of having an "Osechi Potluck Pary" at our place.

So... these are the Osechi dishes we had on Saturday last week, January 5th.  Don't you think they look beautiful with a lot of color and varieties?! 





Given that we all usually miss Japanese food (real one, I mean) here, it was only natural that we all immensely enjoyed the Osechi party, both the food and the festive atmosphere of Japanese New Year's Day (=Oshogatsu).  I am so glad that we had this party.  To my pleasant surprise, Amar loved all the Osechi dishes this time, and he enjoyed celebrating New Year in a Japanese style too, I think.

It seems we had a great kick-off of this New Year 2008!