Happy 2010! New Year's Holiday is a very exciting time in Japan. For many days before the New Year, people across Japan spend their days cleaning. In the office, we took a day to clean out old files, rearrange our desks, and wash common areas. At home, I helped my family by cleaning all the high areas of the house – there are some advantages to being 6'2". It is also important to prepare certain dishes for the New Year; tradition is not to cook during the first 3 days of the New Year. Now, however, people give in and do so. In my host family, we enjoyed these traditional foods only for lunch (the same food for 3 days!). One of the most famous of these foods is mochi (sticky rice cake) soup. It is definitely a different kind of soup, and I have to say I prefer the regular miso... Each of the foods is supposed to symbolize something. For example, the lotus root (because of its shape) symbolizes looking into the future. There is also a kind of fish eggs that symboliz