During the New Year's holiday Japanese families usually gather in spent time together just like the Christmas holidays in Western countries

So for this New Year's holiday, Maiko and I decided to spend time with her family

So we're in Maiko's hometown Aichi which is about three hours of south of Tokyo

And this house behind me is a house that she actually grew up in and since I'm already here for the holidays

I wanted to take this opportunity to show you guys what it's like inside

Their home, how they spend the Japanese holidays, what they eat, what they do

Hopefully we make it to the shrine and maybe a little bit of the house itself and today is December 31st

New Year's Eve day. It's about 10 o'clock right now, but let's start this video in the morning

All right, that feels a little bit better. I got my coffee now. It's still 7:30 everyone is still asleep

Just got to wait for everyone to wake up now, Check some email

We're actually in her old brother's room right now. I don't know if you guys can see this, Maiko was still in the bed

She had a long night. Time to take a shower

Right so not a lot of stuff is happening this morning. Dad went back to sleep

Maiko's mom is in the kitchen

Maiko's over there doing her makeup

Let me just show you around the house while we have some time because we're not really doing so much what right now

I guess this is like part of the day not a lot happens

So this is a typical house in Aichi

Countryside/ Two stories, three bedrooms, living, dining, and kitchen and even a cool Tatami room with a personal shrine

All right so this right behind me is their backyard as you can see, it's actually quite bigger

Then you would expect specially when comparing it to Tokyo

There's Coco

At the front of the house there's usually a family name tag like this and this laced rope like decoration is called Shimenawa

It's a special decoration for the new year. It's supposed to exorcise bad fortunes in Maiko's parents house. It's everywhere, in the kitchen, bathroom

Etc. And at the main entrance, there's a Shochikubai Banzai, which is also a New Year's decoration

Shochikubai means pine, bamboo, and plum tree. Pine and bamboo stay green all year round and plum trees bloom beautifully in winter

So it symbolizes remaining faithful and a healthy long life

This is the kitchen

It's got a typical stainless sink, built-in gas stove with three burners, and a small fish grill. Dishwasher, family size refrigerator

Oven, microwave, rice cooker, and a toaster. This is the Kamidana Shinto altar

The miniature shrine can be found in many Japanese households, shops, and sometimes offices for daily worship since it's a New Year's chimney

Shimenawa and Saki is added as offerings and Maiko's dad placed a big jumbo lottery ticket here

How cool would that be if they won? All right, so this is the second floor toilet. It's actually quite interesting

Just the way they save water and space at once. I really want to show you

This is Maiko's sister's room right here. And this is the toilet right here, and you can see there's actually not a lot of space

Let's open this door

So you can see right behind me. This is the entire toilet bathroom space. Like right here is the door

Here's a toilet

So if you were to sit down in this like my knees are pretty much hitting the door

But this is common for a secondary toilet in Japan. The main downstairs toilet is much larger and has a separate sink area

Just wanted to show you how space efficient homes are in Japan

But what's interesting about this toilet is that you've probably seen in my other video the actual sink is built into the toilet

So what happens is when you flush the toilet the water comes down into here

You can wash your hands and then that water is used to fill up the toilet

It's actually a pretty cool way to save water and it also saves space because there's actually not a lot of room

To put another sink in here and obviously it has this bidet control so you have all that functionality

It has a seat warmer

One thing you find on a Japanese home is that people love to watch TV and just sit around all day

Especially on days like this when no one has work or they just like sit around and watch TV and

Japanese TV is probably like the most interesting

during the New Year's holiday because they know people are gonna be sitting at home doing nothing and just

Relaxing and having a good time with your family

And so the program it's actually pretty good. The one time that I do watch TV

Japanese TV is like this time because they have really interesting programming

So Maiko's younger sister needs to be dropped off at the station. She's actually spending New Year's with her friends in Kyoto

There goes one family member

So just dropped her off at the train station and now we're going to the supermarket to pick up some food. It's actually quite late

So I think you might just have lunch there or somewhere

Not very traditional in my eyes but apparently like us is that Japanese people don't celebrate at lunch in the New Year's, right?

Don't celebrate it (Maiko) Nope

Cause you- (Maiko)There's nothing to celebrate for lunch.

This place is just as so busy right now. Hopefully here shopping done with work quickly go back home

The supermarket is filled with people. In fact, I've been to this market before but it was never anything like this

So we've been waiting in line forever, the lines are so long on New Year's Day

Reminder to get your stuff before New Year's Day. Otherwise, we'll be waiting

There's like so many people

All that wait for a self checkout line to scan your items and go. Is it this convenient in your country?

We're just gonna relax for a little bit and I think we're gonna start cooking. We means my mom

Well, we already has a lot of stuff cooked and in my family we don't serve drinking early or anything

So one thing I learned about the supermarket just now

I actually offered, told Maiko that we should pay for the groceries

But Maiko told me that that if we did it be very rude to pay for the groceries

Because we are the guests in the house even though I wanted to help out

I guess you really aren't supposed to help out in the situation

Your parents are poor.

Maiko- I know but if you're like offering the support in a financial that means you are showing that oh

I'm making more money than you guys.

Paolo- it's weird because I think in my family if I were to

Come home and help pay for groceries and actually be happy.

I think they'd be happy.

Yeah, I think it's culturally, like yeah

I think in my culture its easier to like

Accept like like if someone has more money than you it's not like, oh they're better than you just like. Oh, okay. Cool

Thank you. I appreciate it.

How about you guys? What's your culture? Like is it okay to pay is it not? I'm not quite sure

Let me know in the comments. So here's the problem today since I woke up so early. I'm gonna be super tired

So I'm trying to figure out when to take a nap

We're supposed to have dinner at around 6:00 6:45, and we leave here at 11:30. So maybe after dinner. I'll go and take a nap

But the problem with that is you don't want to like take a nap right after you eat, right?

Anyways, it's about

2:30 right now dad's out

We just got back from shopping and it sounds Maiko's sister's gone for the rest of the trip

And it's just us

You think about like during the Christmas holidays like family everyone comes home and you're supposed to have a

reconnection of people getting together but this time around it's like

brothers gone, Maiko's sister's gone and it's just us four but I guess that's like

You know that that happens

Right and a lot of families not everyone comes home or everyone like starts getting older and they have different plans

So anyways, we'll just continue on. Okay. So Maiko's just turning on TV and watching TV now. This is like a constant theme

Probably for this video. So as you can see behind me they're just sitting back having some coffee, some donuts

It's not very Japanese thing. But Krispy Kreme is now around Japan. So what else do you guys expect?

Coco-chan

Coco

Hey Coco

Maiko- I just cut these

And make it break

The final meal is prepared you can see behind me. Happy New Years guys. We're about to have our final meal of the year

So this is what we're having for New Year's dinner. What goes on the table really depends on the family and where you live

Maiko's family dinner is based on traditions in Nagano Prefecture where her dad is from so I'm quite interested in the menu you have Toshi

Toshitori-zakana which is grilled yellowtail, burdock, pickled octopus, marinated herring roe, Namasu

Marinated bean curd, Chikuzeni which is a broad vegetable and chicken and lots of Sashimi

Since Nagano is an inland Prefecture seafood used to be considered a luxury food. And so nowadays

It's a must-have on the menu to celebrate the new year and my favorite is a Chawanmushi

It's kind of like a hot steamy egg pudding

They're watching TV again

Japanese people just love watching TV. All right. So now we're gonna do Hatsumode it's about

12:40 right now and instead of like going out to like the city center and go party and drinking and celebrate the countdown

People actually go to the shrine. I can't believe like the family will get together. It's already like it's late

I don't know if you can see what I face. I'm so - super tired actually fell asleep a little bit. I'm excited

I've actually never been to Hatsumode

I've done it after the New Year's but I've never actually gone to the shrine at midnight

Ever.

As long as I've been in Japan.

Matsumoto is known as the first shrine visit of the year. Maiko's family goes at midnight

So we left the house about 15 minutes before the New Year. Its standard to go to the family's local gods shrine

Which is usually the closest one but it's also okay to visit other shrines or more than one for Hatsumode

Oh wow there's a huge fire burning

There's just something magical about being at a shrine at midnight to welcome in the New Year. If you guys ask me what to do

For the New Year's in Japan

I suggest trying this at least once as this is so much different than any New Year's I have ever spent

After praying at the main altar and the ones on the side, it's time to check out the Futami

Which is food offered by the shrine during Hatsumode. So the shrine was offering Oshiruko red bean soup with mochi balls

I've known shrines to give away sacred alcohol called Omiki and Amazake. All right, Happy New Year's guys. It's officially

2019. What's really nice too is they hand out soup to everyone so let's go get some soup

Looks like - Oh it has like little balls of mochi, so this is called Shitako

It's a red bean soup. I thought it was gonna be like a Miso. It's red beans

Guess they don't know at this shrine

It appears a tradition is to gather around the large crackling fire and greet with neighbors for the New Years while eating the hot soup

Definitely love the local vibe here

All right so we just got back and now we're gonna have a little Kampai toast. this is Toshikoshi soba

It's supposed to help celebrate the New Year in a long

Prosperous life. Have long thin noodles to symbolize long life a long year, happy year

Prosperous year. It's 12:30 right now. We just got back and we're still eating. We're like eating all day

The next morning January 1st people eat

Osechi which is a traditional Japanese

New Year's food and served in this pretty delicate box called Jubako. Forgot to hit record on the main camera

So here's my Instagram story

And don't forget to follow my Instagram account to see what I'm doing on a daily basis. Also served is Ozoni soup

Which is completely different in each area. So again, we're basing another Nagano Prefecture customs in the Dashi soup

You'll find chicken, Shiitake, bamboo shoots, ox eye cabbage. Kamaboko fishcake. Yam. And of course Mochi

All right so that concludes the video. If you liked it help me out and hit that like button

Let me know what you thought about how to Japanese family spends the holidays and let me know in the comments what the difference is

Between your home and Japan and if you want to see more my adventures in Japan

I released a video every Saturday morning and sometimes Wednesdays

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