We say that eating Nanakusa-gayu (rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) on the seventh day of the first month of year keeps illness away from us (also ease the stomach after New Year's too much drink & food). I bought a handy seven herbs pack from a super market and cocked porridge for breakfast. Apparently, people believed that young herbs' vitality in winter exorcise bad spirit. My father always mention this phrase in front of porridge, 'Seri (dropwort), Nazuna (shepherb's purse), Gogyou (cotton weed), Hakobera (chickweed), Hotokenoza (cotton sow thistle), Suzuna (turnip), Suzushiro (Japanese white radish), these are the seven herbs.' I didn't know that this phrase was in a book called 'kakaishou' which was probably written in 1362. And people started to eat Nanakusa-gayu from Heian period (794-1192). It is an old practice.