Our New Years Day ritual has been a Japanese feast of Osechi Ryori, for the last 5 years or so.  It's partly so we can relive our nostalgia for Japan and to continue to feel connected with Japanese culture. Since Osechi is quite specialsed food, we are fortunate to have a local restaurant which makes obento boxes of it, otherwise I wouldn't know where to begin finding recipes and ingredients.

Typical foods featured in Osechi are:

grilled mackeral filets, grilled salmon, boiled banana prawns

salmon, tuna and mackeral sashimi

salmon roe, cod roe

shiitake mushrooms, mashed sweetened yam, sweet black beans, konyaku, renkon slices (Lotus root)

take no ko (boiled bamboo shoots)

tamago yaki (fried egg roll) 

kamaboko (fish cakes)

sekihan (sticky rice with adzuki beans)

We made the sekihan and miso soup to go with, as well as pickles, like umeboshi. (plums) 

To finish off, there was macha ice cream with mashed, sweet adzuki beans on top. (green tea ice cream) 

It's not the kind of breakfast that most Westerners could handle and even Dag thought he was experiencing fish overload. I like how there's symbolic meaning attached to each food, usually to bring good luck and prosperity. Woops, those fish eggs are for fertility, oh well, a couple wouldn't have much effect, surely?

So from Australia, to our friends in Asia and the rest of the world, Happy New Year.