A New Year’s Eve Tradition

The Japanese have a bundle of New Year traditions, all of which are symbolically significant to one’s life in the coming year. One of them is the eating of soba, or buckwheat noodles.

Although one can eat noodles of any sort, soba is preferred because before cooking it, the dough can be rolled long and thin, symbolizing long life. Plus, because the dough itself is simple to make, soba also stands for a simple (and humble) life – treasured by the Japanese.

Perhaps that wish for a simple life has changed in Japan, where extravagance isn’t necessarily shunned by the younger generations. Still, one can hope, can’t one?