From behind the big punch bowl, in the lower cupboard of the cabinet that dominates the dining room, Reiko pulls out the lacquered vessels. They are coal-black, with bright gold-and-silver images of pine boughs, bamboo stalks and plum blossoms.

She remembers being told as a little girl, when she lived in one of the Western-style homes near the foreign cemetery in Yokohama, that these bowls, made in Kyoto, had been coated with lacquer in the same motif 17 times. Priceless bowls, her grandfather explained, that retain the design as they age, lasting as many as 17 generations without showing wear.

As a young bride, Reiko Kimura went to Washington 29 years ago and has used them only once each year since. Every Jan. 1, the o-wan are brought out and filled with the New Year's zoni soup.

Traditionally zoni is served in rather odd sized o-wan. Too big for miso soup (except, perhaps, an extra large portion) and too small for donburi (bowls of rice topped with something savory), these bowls can't be used at Reiko's table year-round -- especially since her husband has come to expect not miso shiru, but eggs and toast for breakfast.

Every Japanese family has its own style of preparing the New Year's o-zoni. Regional differences also govern what ingredients will be used. There are really three variables in the soup: the broth (dashi), the pounded mochi rice-cake, and the other vegetables or soup garnish.

If you are east of Nagoya, on the Kanto plain, you are likely to be eating a clear soup (sumashi jiru) with a grilled square-cut morsel of mochi, pieces of chicken, kamaboko (steamed fish-paste), shrimp and leafy greens.

In the Kansai region -- including Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe -- you are certain to be served boiled round pieces of mochi and vegetables, including sweet potato (satsuma imo) and burdock root (gobo) in a white miso-based soup.

Pounded mochi cakes have long been eaten for good fortune. As early as the 15th century, a soup with pieces of mochi was eaten in a ritual that symbolized a meal with the gods.

The tradition of eating the auspicious zoni -- written with the characters zatsu meaning "miscellany" and ni for "to simmer or cook" -- was honored in almost every corner of the archipelago, and by many Japanese nationals overseas.

Cooking outside of Japan for so many years, Reiko's eclectic recipe for zoni has been influenced by many factors. Her grandmother, a refined woman from Kyoto, taught her mother the recipe for the white miso soup broth that was eventually passed on to Reiko. Until she passed away, Reiko's mother sent her the white Saikyo miso of her youth so she could duplicate grandmother's soup. It took a while before her husband, a Tokyo native, acquired a taste for it, but he now looks forward to this miso zoni just as Reiko's grown children do.

For a long time, she had to use the square-cut mochi sold at the local Asian market and not the round mochi of her childhood, the steamed glutinous rice she remembers being pounded by men and then shaped into soft, little round balls by the women. These days, the availability of small round rice cakes has revived childhood memories of past New Year's holidays.

The most unusual ingredient of Reiko's zoni was the vegetable garnish. When she first came to the United States, even shiitake mushrooms and daikon were exotic. She got by for years with carrots and turnips -- and even came to like the soup she created. These days, though, she can easily find traditional vegetables, such as gobo, and has reintroduced them into her own style of soup.

Like many Japanese, Reiko in her decidedly un-Japanese surroundings has come to mark the coming of the New Year with a simple bowl of soup. A miscellaneous soup with no set ingredients except for the rice cake, zoni is a unique and personal dish, a dish that becomes a comfort food to the many who look forward to eating it once each year.