New Years is coming up in only a few short weeks, and you know what that means: Nengajo! At least, you would know that if you lived in Japan, because it is such a huge part of the year here.

New Years in Japan is the equivalent of Christmas in the US (and Christmas in Japan is kind of like New Years in the US). Over here, Christmas is a warm-and-fuzzy date holiday where wishes come true and you want to spend a romantic evening with your lover. New Years, on the other hand, is the everybody-come-home-for-the-holidays, 8-hour-traffic-jams, wake-up-early-for-presents, holiday-sales holiday, and along with Obon in the summer, one of the biggest holiday events in Japan. I absolutely love New Years here, but I’ll spare you the details because I’ve written about my past New Years holidays here, and I’m sure I’ll write about this year’s as well.

Back on topic: Nengajo. Nengajo are basically colorful postcards that you send to everyone you have ever met in your life. Kind of like the Family Christmas Photo/Letter that everyone sends out back in the States. You all probably know the Chinese zodiac from the menus at Chinese restaurants — you know, boars, dogs, pigs, sheep, chickens, tigers, and a couple other circusy things. Well, Nengajo nearly always use the 12-year cycle as a theme (the exception being the occasional obligatory nengajo with a photo of the kiddies doing something cute or stupid) and 2012 happens to be the Year of the Rabbit. So this year’s nengajo are all rabbit-themed.

Everyone always tells me I should paint the coming year’s animal in the same style as my Chickens of the World series (chickens being one of the zodiac signs, of course) as if I could just poop out dozen paintings in one week and package it up as a calendar. Not that it isn’t a great idea — it is — it’s just that I don’t have the time with all the other stuff going on. But last year I painted a tiger for the Year of the Tiger and our own nengajo, and this year, dadgummit, I had better paint a rabbit! My wife’s grandmother also asked me to design her a nengajo.

So it’s a bit early for New Year’s talk, but just the right timing for printing up and hand-writing and mailing 100 postcards. Here are two Year of the Rabbit paintings. See if you can’t guess which one is for an old Japanese granny and which one is for me and my wife…

Nengajo 1: Cute Rabbits Making Mochi

Nengajo 2: Fukuiraptor Chasing a Rabbit, Carrying an Otoshidama