Please chew carefully in 2012

So it's 2012, and I suppose you can guess I have resolved to take a bit better care of my blog. Not sure how long this resolution will last, but I'll give it a go.

I've decided blogging about the business ALL the time is not as exciting to you readers as I may find it, so I'm going to throw in a few other random things along the way. Honestly, I think sometimes blogs can get a bit tedious if they're too personal too, but maybe a mix of both will help spice it up a bit.

So, what do the J Stylers get up to at New Years? If you read our NEWS on the front page, you'll know we've given ourselves some time off for a start.

Here in Australia, Christmas is the big Gift Giving Season, and being a supplier to gift stores, by about the 22nd of December we are pretty much over it. There's no time left to get stock to our customers before the big day, and we've been working harder than elves for about a month in the lead-up, so we really do need a long winter's nap (except it's summer).

Sam's family are all in Japan, and they couldn't give two hoots about Christmas. My Mum thinks this is fantastic because there is no need to fight the in-laws over where our family will spend Christmas every year. Besides, my Mum lives about 2 minutes walk from the beautiful beaches of Jervis Bay, so choosing a week at Grandma's for Christmas is pretty much a no-brainer.

There are few Christians in Japan, and most of the Christmas celebration focusses on Christmas Eve, a night for "lovers" (or "rubbers" if you pronounce it with a Japanese accent). There's usually a few good fireworks displays on, and smoochy couples wander from bar to bar until the wee hours. It's a bit commercialised (any excuse for gift giving) but surprisingly not so much as it is here.

New Years is the big religious holiday. A lot of people try to visit a shrine at midnight. You usually don't get anywhere near the shrine gate until at least 3am, unless you've been camped out since the 30th. The traditional meal is soba noodles on New Year's Eve. Long noodles help you to live a long life. Then on New Year's Day (after you get home from the shrine) you eat a kind of sweet bean soup with mochi (rice cakes) floating in it called "Zouni".

Here at home in Australia, "Noodle Master" Sam always makes us soba noodles for dinner on New Year's Eve, before we head to the local Australian-style fireworks. Today he made Zouni for lunch.

The thing that really gets me about Zouni is that it's dangerous. The rice cakes are really chewy. Which is great. I love them. But after watching the Australian News broadcast in the evening where they tell us how many people were rescued (or drowned) at beaches on New Year's Day, we switch to Japanese News and the news reader is reading the statistics on how many people died from choking on the mochi rice cakes in their Zouni. It's mostly people over 80 years old who can't chew their extra chewy rice cakes well enough. A lady who was 101 was taken to hospital this year (she recovered thank goodness). On the last news report I watched 17 people had been hospitalised and 2 had died!

New Years Advice from Australia experts: Swim between the flags, and slip, slop, slap.

New Years Advice from Japanese experts: chop your rice cakes into smaller pieces and don't slurp them too quickly with your soup.