Christmas vs New Year's

The quintessential year-end Japanese holiday is not Christmas but New Year's, and it tends to be solemn and quiet rather than joyous. I used to fear it, but now I've learned to embrace it. Perhaps because it's a lot easier to manage than it used to be.

The hardest thing about then vs now is that then, everything closed down for almost a week. Everything. From food stores to hospitals.

Imagine a whole week without stores. Sounds awful? Sounds good?

Preparing enough food for a whole week, with only the refrigeration of an unheated kitchen was daunting. But it was also do-able. And the result was a whole week without ever once running to a store.