Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu! This is the New Year's greeting you give when January 1st has officially arrived. Before that there's a standard Happy New Year's greeting for December. On December 31st, the only Japanese student in our dorm prepared us the traditional soba for the new year.You eat these buckwheat noodles with tempura shrimp, chopped scallion, thinly sliced fish sausage and hard boiled egg (I skipped out on the egg). The length of the noodle is supposed to, just like on Chinese New Year, represent a desire for longevity.  On New Year's day he also made us two styles of zoni, which is a soup that has mochi (rice cakes similar in consistency to marshmallow) in it. There's a bit of caution that you need when eating it, actually, as many elderly and children choke on it every year (as of 12-1, the casualty rate was at 7 injuries, 1 death). The way you prepare it is different among the prefectures, and I ate a style meant for adults from the Mie prefecture and one meant for kids. The one for adults is essentially miso soup, but with the mochi instead of tofu and with spinach added. The kids one was surprisingly chicken soup with mochi.
Another big tradition to do on New Year's day is to go to your local shrine (or any shrine really, I guess) and pray for good fortune throughout the year. At the bigger shrines they served food off to the side to warm you up after the long wait to pray, and offer up fortune telling for the year. We went to the local shinto shrine in our neighborhood, even though we weren't really sure what kami (god) is enshrined there. I once asked a teacher, the head of the study abroad office here, actually, and he said he had no idea.
The New Year's decorations went up a little after Christmas, and traditionally when the New Year's holidays are over on January 6th, you take them to a shrine to get burned and purified as they take in all your bad luck. One decoration is two stacked mochi with a mikan (mandarin orange/clementine) on top. The second is a wreath made out of straw with sacred paper chains tied on and topped by, you guessed it, another mikan. Depending on the zodiac year that's being entered, there is also a slight variation in them, as this year was year of the snake, some had a snake on them as well.
It's also customary to send out New Year's greetings cards, which I'll be doing late to people in America. When I went to a stationary store it was actually really intimidating trying to pick one. It was also somewhat surprising to see that, yes, Hallmark is even in on the greeting card business in Japan. I think the one card I wanted and decided against was too big for the envelope and I couldn't understand how to fold it into the envelope. There are all different types, as well. The more expensive cards you had to take to the counter and were about 8 dollars for one. There are envelope cards meant to be mailed as letters, and postcard ones that you write your greeting on the front of. There were stickers featuring snakes to decorate your cards with as well as seal your envelope, and stamps of all sorts (even Pokemon) to help bring in the new year. The only thing I got stuck on was how you were meant to get that ink color that they displayed as a sample. New Year's money is also customary, where relatives give you a little bit of money for hopes in the New Year and as a gift for making it through the last year into another one.
When I read the newspaper for the first day of the new year, I was also surprised to see an article on the specific types of sake for every occasion, and stating that while drinking on New Years is not customary, there is a specific type that should be consumed.
I hope everyone had a happy New Year, and wish you luck in 2013!
~Zenko~