Three animals at a low table, each lifting a tangle of noodles out of a steaming bowl: a rat, an ox and a tiger — the first three of the twelve zodiac animals, in order. The hiragana across the top reads としこしそば, toshikoshi soba, the buckwheat noodles eaten on the last night of the year. Supplied as a colour sample and a printable line drawing, and useful for teaching the Japanese year-end in a classroom as well as for winter craft time at home. Free to download and print, no registration needed.
🎨 Toshikoshi soba with the zodiac animals — colour sample
🖊 Toshikoshi soba with the zodiac animals — line art
About toshikoshi soba — things to talk about while you colour
A few things to talk about while the colouring gets done. Two notes on the drawing first. The steam and the noodles are the places to leave the paper alone — bare white does more for both than any grey — and the three bowls are where a strong colour belongs, since almost everything else on this sheet is fur and broth.
🍜Noodles on the last night of the yearEaten on ōmisoka, 31 December. The custom is generally traced to the Edo period, by which time it was already widespread. Most households eat it in the evening and finish before midnight; leaving the bowl unfinished into the new year is said to undo the point of it.
📖“Thin and long” — a wish for a long lifeSoba is drawn out thin and long, and the wish that travels with it is for a long and healthy life. This is the meaning the custom carries, not a claim about what the noodles do.
🌱Cutting off the year’s troublesSoba breaks more easily than wheat noodles, and the second reading turns that into a virtue: the year’s hardships are cut off cleanly with the last mouthful. A third explanation gets repeated as well — that gold-leaf workers used soba dough to gather up stray gold dust, so the noodles came to stand for gathering in fortune.
⭐The zodiac, and the new yearOnce the year turns, the year’s animal is the thing everyone asks about. Strictly, eto is a sixty-year cycle of ten stems and twelve branches; in everyday Japanese it simply means the twelve animals — rat, ox, tiger and on round.
📅How the last day of the year soundsAlongside the noodles: the Kōhaku singing contest on television, and joya no kane, the temple bells struck 108 times through the midnight hour — usually explained as one strike for each of the 108 earthly desires.
💬 Conversation starters
Do you eat toshikoshi soba every year? What do you like on top of it?
Can you name next year’s zodiac animal without stopping to think?
Is there a New Year’s Eve you still remember?
Age range
Ages 3 to 5
Category
Animals, Seasons and Events
File format
PDF (line art) and PNG (color sample)
🍜 What is toshikoshi soba?
Buckwheat noodles eaten on the evening of 31 December, the last day of the Japanese year. Because soba is thin and long, the custom carries a wish for a long life. It is about as close to universal as a Japanese food custom gets — hot in broth or cold with a dipping sauce, plain or topped with tempura, herring or a pouch of fried tofu, depending on the region and the household.
🐉 What is the Japanese zodiac?
Twelve animals that name the years in a repeating cycle: ne (rat), ushi (ox), tora (tiger), u (rabbit), tatsu (dragon), mi (snake), uma (horse), hitsuji (sheep), saru (monkey), tori (rooster), inu (dog), i (boar). Two of them differ from the Chinese list most English readers will have met — Japan’s twelfth animal is a wild boar rather than a pig, and the eighth is usually a sheep where China has a goat. The three animals in this drawing are the first three, in order.
🎍 What else happens on New Year’s Eve?
The day is spent finishing things off. Ōsōji, the big year-end clean, is meant to be done before the year turns. Then comes the soba in the evening, Kōhaku Uta Gassen on television, and the temple bells at midnight. It is a quiet evening rather than a party — in Japan the celebrating belongs to the following morning.
