Look closely at a daruma from Jindaiji and you will find that its left eye is not a black dot but a written character: the Sanskrit letter "A," inked by a monk. Every March 3 and 4, this temple in Chofu, western Tokyo, holds one of Japan's three great daruma markets — some 300 stalls of the red wishing dolls, a hundred thousand visitors over two days — and its signature ritual is this eye-opening. Elsewhere you paint in a plain pupil when you make your wish. Here, a priest inscribes "A," the sound of beginnings, into the new doll's eye; when the wish is fulfilled and the doll comes home to the temple, the right eye receives "Un," the sound of endings. A daruma lives out its service between the first breath and the last.

Jindaiji itself was founded in 733, making it Tokyo's second-oldest temple after Senso-ji, and it could hardly be less like Asakusa: a wooded hollow of spring water at the edge of the Musashino plateau, famous for its buckwheat noodles, with the botanical garden of Jindai at its back. The market coincides with the temple's grandest rite, the Ganzan Daishi festival, so goma fires burn all day and a costumed procession winds through in the afternoon. The plum trees by the gate are usually at their best.

The classic circuit is centuries old: buy a daruma, have its eye opened, eat a bowl of Jindaiji soba, carry your new year's resolve home. If January didn't take, early March offers a second new year — this one with noodles.