The year of 2021 soon will end. How will you celebrate the new year of 2022? Well, I celebrated new year in Japan four times in here I would like to write some of those experiences. Hopes you will enjoy my stories 😉
I was a research student at that time (a stage before entering full time student in Japan), just three months after my arrival in Japan. I thought that New Year in Japan is same as other countries. There would be fireworks, people gathers with friends or families to stay up the whole night waiting for changing of the day. Daily life would go as normal day without any hardships.
But, everything was out of my expectations.
I was told to prepare enough money and food as post office (I am a JP Post Bank customer), groceries shop will close during New Year holiday, and garbage will not be collected the first 4 days in January.
Later I know that actually no problem with money, because JP Post have many ATM machines in big mall that open during holiday. Just be sure to prepare some 1000 Yen if you plan to go somewhere with public transportation, because the biggest amount accepted by machine money exchanger is only 1000 Yen. But for food, I think it’s better to prepare some for at least 2 days. The convenient store (Famima, 7 Eleven, etc) is still open for 24 hours, you know the price a little bit higher than supermarket, but still okay in case of you really don’t have something to eat. The garbage really problem actually on namagomi (生ごみ）only (the left over food, vegetable, fish, etc) that we should make sure to empty the bin by the end of December or we will keep at least until January 4.
