Christmas Day

Lots have people have been curious about how we 'did' Christmas this year. I guess Japan is a bit of a mystery to people in many ways and it makes sense that they would, of course, celebrate differently to us... particularly when it comes to things like Western Christian holidays and traditions.....but no'one seems to have told Japan that. You see, Japan celebrates Christmas in a more obvious and exquisite and extreme (and expensive) way than Australia seems to! Japan began celebrating Christmas a bit later than Australia, but still early enough for mass marketing to get to the people. It seemed to start in mid November with lots of advertising for the light up events that I attended and mentioned in my previous blog entry. In addition, stores (especially the massive department stores) started to promote Christmas presents and Christmas sales and gorgeous trees and decorations sprouted up all over the city. Even Juso got in on the action. A huge (and extremely ugly) tree was put up on a vacant lot near the post office care of some big corporation, the small naked urinating baby statue by the station wore a smal fluffy santa coat, and our dear little red light district 'Sakaemachi' was decorated with three Christmas trees and a very old Japanese man standing outside the stripper pubs looking rather disheveled in a Santa suit. Ahh, Christmas! It was actually lots of fun to organise and experience Christmas in Japan this year. Present here are beautifully and artfully wrapped all year round, and Japan is a gift giving nation so there were boundless present ideas available. I bought lots of special cakes and desserts and little gifts to send to family and friends back home and bought little bits and pieces for friends we're made here too. I also had the thrill of collecting packages from home on my bicycle! It was really fun, but ridiculously busy. Japanese people get really excited about Christmas, going so far as to eat a pseudo Japanese French Christmas dinner at one of the many hotels offering it, and every family (or so it seems) orders in advance a specially decorated Christmas cake. This is usually something like a vanilla or chocolate sponge cake with fresh cream and lots of ridiculous decorations. You can even order one with four different types of cake, two slices of each, artfully arranged to look like one big cake. Incredible. It seems also that someone awhile back told the Japanese people that on Christmas, Westerners do two things. 1)Eat Christmas Baumkuchen (a German style rolled sponge cake that is apprently worth lining up for two hours to purchase, even if you preordered it) and 2)Go toKFC. Yes folks, the same Japanese that are still three years on lining up for 203 hours to try Krispy Kreme, the same Japanese that will ordinarily line up for approximately 20minutes to eat Belgian waffles, the same Japanese who have recently been the victims of extreme marketing on behalf of McDonalds and their new 'Quarter Pounder' stores (yes, the only thing on the menu is a Quarter Pounder - read more here: http://inventorspot.com/articles/mcdonalds_japan_goes_nobrand_with_quarter_pounder_shops_19505), these same Japanese line up for hours on cold wintery Christmas to purchase an authentic KFC Christmas Dinner. Incredible. In addition to the madness, Japan offers a pretty amazing Christmas - plenty of fabulous outdoor events, amazing shopping and great food. So this year, because Ross and i weren't heading on our winter vacation until Boxing Day (the 26th Dec), we decided to host Christmas at home. Earlier in the year, we had heard that most of our friends here in Japan would be heading back home for Chrissy so we organised a small lunch with people who we knew had no plans and would be lonely. :( We invited our friends KJ and Rachel (from Jersey), Chris and Leigh (from Virginia) and a good friend of Leigh's, a British girl who teaches yoga here; Ursula. We divided up the meal and Ross and I were assigned desserts, chocolates and decorating. Excellent. This meant i was able to choose delicious food from the department stores here, share the fabulous Aussie Christmas food mum had sent over, and watch the Japanese line up for a ridiculous amount of time just to buy 'THE cake'. Perfect all round. Poor Rachel got really sick the week of Christmas, and having signed herself up for 'main meal' duty found herself hiking out to the giant Costco warehouse a few suburbs over to buy Roast Chickens on Christmas Eve. She reported back that she was glad she was so sick when she took this journey as when she arrived at Costco she was cranky and sick and able to harness this negative energy enough to fight the Japanese people for the last two chickens on the shelf. Excellent. Despite giving Chris and Leigh (who are wonderful people but also notoriously late!) the responsibility of bringing the snacks and starters (thereby pushing the start time to much later in the day - we love you Chris and Leigh! :)), everything went off without a hitch and we had one of the loveliest Christmases ever, despite being so far from home. It was a wonderful day of good food and wonderful company.