I visited Kotohira shrine at Kagawa Prefecture for Hatsu moude, the first shrine visit of the new year, with some friends from my university yesterday. Many people visited there because it is a very famous shrine.
At the shrine I found Miffy, a famous rabbit character, many times.
Do you know why Miffy was there?
Because we have a custom in which we allocate one of twelve animals to each year and this year's animal is the rabbit. The twelve animals are allocated periodically, so twelve years from now will be also a year of the rabbit.
This custom is called "Eto" and the twelve animals are called "Juni shi"
According to Wikipedia, it was originally a cyclic numeral system in ancient China and was used as a calendar system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagenary_cycle
We don't use eto for numerical system even now but we have allocated an animal to each year.
FYI: All of Juni-shi are as follows.
1 子 (ne） : rat
2 牛 (ushi) : ox or buffalo
3 虎 (tora) : tiger
4 卯 (u) : rabbit
5 辰 (tatsu) : dragon
6 巳 (mi) : snake
7 午 (uma) : horse
8 未 (hitsuji): sheep
9 申 (saru) : monkey
10 鶏 (tori) : chicken
11 戌 (inu) : dog
12 亥 (i) : pig or boar
Please note that several characters are written and pronounced in a very old style of Japanese.
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