Nengajoo

It’s interesting how our sensei try to let us experience the Japanese custom while we are learning Nihongo. Since o-shogatsu (New Year) is coming soon and it’s a common practice for Japanese to send out nengajoo to family, friends and acquaintances, the students of Nihongo Ichi are also given a chance to experience this custom ourselves. We are given two nengajoo each, one for our own classmate, and another for a Nihonjin friend.



First, each and every of us were asked to write our own address on the front of the card. Sensei collected all card and these cards will be randomly distributed, so that each of us would be receiving a card from somebody from the class. Since I won’t be attending the class tomorrow, I’d already gotten mine and had already submitted it to Shin sensei today. It just so happened that I got to write to Hien-san, a Vietnamese girl I’ve grown quite close to since the very beginning of the class. Hien is my age and has two sons aged 6 and 5 she left under her parents’ care in Hanoi. She had been really helpful during the first few weeks when I was still in my confinement period. She even helped carrying my bag at times when she noticed I was extra tired. So, it was easy writing to her – expressing my gratitude for her friendship and all her assistance as well as expressing my hope for a long lasting friendship.



Instead of just one more nengajoo for a Nihonjin friend, I got two. I chose to write to Yohei-san and Mori-chan, two volunteers in Nihongo Ichi class on Thursday and Wednesday respectively. Yohei-san was actually a later addition to Kawaguchi sensei’s list of volunteers in Nihongo Ichi class, but he has become a good friend of some sort, taking note when I was absent from class and even remember Huzaifah’s name.




Mori-chan, on the other hand, had been with us since the early days when we were still trying to remember counting one to ten in nihongo. She has a cheerful personality, a charming disposition and a cute face – so much so that I believe she’ll be one of the top recipient of nengajoo from Nihongo Ichi students.



Nengajoo is perhaps the most important and popular greeting cards in Japan. The ones given by sensei to us are the postcards sold at the post office. There are many different types of cards sold everywhere – stationary shops, 100 yen shops, even konbini. Since the coming year is going to be the year of dog according to the Japanese calendar, nengajoo with Snoopy as its main picture is tremendously popular this year.


There are some basic rules about writing nengajoo – which is well explained here. I however do not conform to the normal practice of drawing the animal-of-the-year on my nengajoo. Instead, with the help of a friend, I have roaster on mine – hopefully the recipient of my cards will take that as a sign of saying sayounara to the year of the roaster.

Minna san - yoi otoshi o kudasai! (Have a good year everybody)