On New Year's day _zōni_, a stew of various kinds of vegetables is eaten and a spiced sake called _toso_ is drunk and offered to visitors. No work is done. Visits are exchanged between friends, and formal calls made on superiors. The phrase _Shinnen o medetô gozarimasu_ (New Year's congratulations to you) is in everybody's mouth. The _ujigami_ are visited and also the Shinto temples which lie in the direction (_ehô_) indicated by the cyclic name of the year. Thus the year of the Hare is associated with the East. The Gods who preside over this particular year are called the Toshi-toku-jin (year-virtue-Gods). In some places a lamp, consisting of a coarse earthenware saucer with a wick, is lighted at the New Year in honour of the God of the Privy. Sick people at this time throw away their stockings or drawers on a frequented road, and if any one picks them up they expect to recover. Samurai boys receive presents of _hamayumi_ (devil-quelling bows). The seventh of the first month is called Nanakusa, or seven herbs, because in ancient times people went out into the country to gather wild pot-herbs which were made into a mess with rice and eaten on this day. The New Year's celebrations end with the Sahe no Kami festival (now called _dondo_ or _sagichô_) on the fourteenth or fifteenth of the first month, when the decorations above described are made the material for a bonfire.[281] =Tatari-gami wo utsushi-tatematsuru norito= (service for the respectful removal of deities who send a curse).--This _norito_ (No. 25) is long, but it contains nothing worthy of special notice. The mischievous deities are reminded of the divine right of the Mikado, and of the quelling by Futsunushi and Takemika-dzuchi of the evil beings who plagued Japan before the descent of Ninigi. Offerings of cloth, a mirror, jewels, bows and arrows, swords, a horse, sake, rice in ear and in grain, and various kinds of flesh and vegetables, are set before them, with the request that they should retire to enjoy these good things in some pure spot among the hills and streams and remain there, rather than work curses and violence in the Palace. It is to be distinguished from the Michiahe ritual, which was addressed to the Protective Road-deities in order to keep off pestilence. The present formula is a direct appeal to the evil deities themselves. It is not quite clear who they were. Perhaps all possibly harmful Gods were meant to be included. =Ceremony when Envoys were despatched to Foreign Countries=.--On such occasions the Gods of Heaven and Earth, with the phallic Chiburi no Kami, or Road-Gods, were worshipped outside the city, the envoys taking part in the ceremony and reading a _norito_. The wood-Gods and mountain-Gods were worshipped before cutting the timber for building their ship.