About a year ago (around New Years...) I posted this article about New Years greetings. I'll like to expand on this a bit.
In person
The first time you see someone in the new year in person, you would say:
明けましておめでとうございます。
(あけましておめどとうございます akemashite omedetougozaimasu) - equivalent to Happy New Year
今年も宜しくお願いします。
(ことしもよろしくおねがいします。 kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.) - I'll be indebted to you/relying on you this year too.
You will say this while bowing to the other person, even to people you might normally not bow to, like your family or friends.
Nengajou, New Years postcards
The equivalent of Christmas cards in the west but even bigger in volume, 年賀状 (ねんがじょう nengajou) are New Year's greeting cards; in most cases they are postcards. You can buy postage-paid New Year postcards, called 年賀はがき (ねんがはがき nenga hagaki) at the post office. (A bonus with these 'official' post office 年賀状 is that they are also lottery tickets; if a card you have has a winning number, you can win anything from a big cash prize to a stuffed toy and so on. People who prefer to use their own postcards can even buy special stamps with prize numbers on them.)
You can write the above two phrases on a 年賀状 (明けましておめでとうございます。今年も宜しくお願いします). A more formal greeting that is used in writing only is
謹賀新年 (きんがしんねん kinga shinnen)
An even more elaborate greeting would be something like this:
謹んで新春のご挨拶を申し上げます。
旧年中はひとかたならぬお世話になり、誠にありがとうございました。
...which basically says the same as the first two simple lines.
Besides the greeting itself, you should put the date (January 1, year) and your name (and your family's name if they are co-signing).
It is considered to be more polite to handwrite your 年賀状, but even the average family might send out, and receive, more than a hundred of them every year. So many people print them. The popular home printing device Print Gocco was originally conceived as a device for printing things like 年賀状. Nowadays of course people print them out on their printers. Here is a page of templates that people can download and print out. Electronic 年賀状 are gaining in popularity, but most people do still send out paper postcard versions.



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