I once read somewhere that most New Year Resolutions are broken by mid February. Lucky for me I haven’t bothered to make any this year. So while gym goers up and down Britain are hanging up their trainers, I’m sitting on my sofa in Japan feeling all superior because I’ve not given up anything.

I did think that there is no New Year tradition of making self improvements in Japan. However last year I was given one of these:

This rotund red fellow is apparently modelled after a very important man in Buddhism and is given to people without the pupils coloured in. It is called a Daruma doll and it is hollow and made of papier-mâché. I was told by my student that I was to make a wish, colour one pupil in and then, once the wish came true, I could colour in the other. So I dutifully made my wish, coloured in a pupil and waited.

My wish did not come true all year.

So now it sits on my desk taunting me with it’s never ending wink. The past week I have been wondering quite what to do with it. Do I just throw the useless thing in the bin? Maybe I could drop it from a great hight. Perhaps I give it a ritualistic burning. Or does it roll over to the new year, much like the Lotto?

Asking people does not seem to have gotten me any closer to the answer so I decided to look at Wikipedia, the bastion of all knowledge, in an attempt to solve my problem. I discovered that I had done the whole thing wrong. You are not supposed to make a wish at all, but you should make a resolution, a goal or a big task. Leaving one eye blank is supposed to motivate you to work to finish the task because every time you look at it you are reminded of it. Which I guess makes sense.

So, I’ve done it all wrong then, no wonder my wish did not come true. I did find out what is done with them upon the year end though. Apparently they are brought back to the shrine they came from and a mass burning it is!

As I don’t know where mine originated, I guess I should give him a private send off. Or is that a little sacrilegious?