It's that time of year again, when the weather grows frosty, the days pass all too quickly, and my credit card bill shoots straight up. Ah, the signs of the holidays!
Christmas is my favorite day of the year, though it always feels a bit odd celebrating it in Japan. I've started lots of new holiday traditions with my wife and daughter since coming here more than a decade ago, but there are some things from the United States that I still miss. Like having a real Christmas tree, for example. There's no such thing as a tree lot in Japan; the best we can do is a plastic tree from the local electronics store. And my daughter has to send a letter to Santa Claus instead of visiting in person at a mall (I guess that's not really a negative for us parents, now is it?).
It may be a plastic tree, but decorated it still looks just as beautiful as the real ones!
Don't get me wrong; Christmas is a big thing in Japan. It's just celebrated a bit differently, and mostly by younger people. For starters, the commercial side is much more heavily emphasized than the religious side, which is pretty much non-existent. This is very much a foreign holiday imported and made popular by capitalists (think: big department stores), in much the same way as Halloween. Which is fine by me; I never had a particularly religious upbringing anyway.
I know some people get turned off by the blatant commercialism, but there's no reason you can't enjoy it in moderation and still stick to your values at the same time. For our family, Christmas means showing our love for one another by getting in the gift-giving spirit, and enjoying time off to de-stress, relax, and just be together. It's a time-out from the hustle & bustle of the rat race that defines my usual everyday routine. I also look at it as less of a Christian holiday and more of a non-denominational end-of-year winter celebration kind of thing that anyone can partake in (I once had a Muslim roommate who was surprised and appreciative when I gave him a Christmas present).
Since there's no Thanksgiving in Japan, the Christmas season starts the day after Halloween and lasts a full two months.
This is what the malls look like a few days after Halloween.
It's hard to tell in this picture, but the yellow stars are actually notes with festive greeting messages from local area children.
As in the US, stores, restaurants, and public areas are decorated with all the seasonal trappings you would expect. The big difference is you don't see too many regular people putting up Christmas lights. Whenever you do come across the odd strand of lights wrapped around trees or apartment balconies, chances are good a foreigner such as myself lives there.
I'm proud of our happy little lights!
However local city governments usually put up good displays of Christmas lights in public places, often around the bigger train stations. We like to walk around the Shinjuku Station area, which has some of the best. Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa is also well known for its spectacular winter illumination festival, one of the largest in Tokyo. Spending a night there on the weekend before Christmas has become a family tradition.
What follows is a sampling of some of the best lights we've seen during the season:
Shinjuku is looking pretty in pink this year.
This magnificent glass tree welcomes visitors to Roppongi.
A wreath decorates the entrance to the winter illumination at Showa Kinen Park.
On cold December nights Showa Kinen Park is transformed into a shimmering fairytale landscape.
This clever display combines the blue outline of Mt. Fuji with a sparkling Japanese style castle.
From atop a hill at the back of the park, we had a perfect view of all the light displays spreading into the distance before us.
As we were leaving Showa Kinen Park, we ran into a group of animal trainers showing off their Christmas dogs. We couldn't resist shouldering our way to the front of the small crowd to snap some pics of the dogs to share with you:
Japan, being the land of cute, has a whole cottage industry devoted to producing adorable pet clothing lines.
Finding Christmas presents in Japan is easy. We always kick off the season in late November, in sync with my American sense of timing, by doing some Christmas shopping in Kawagoe (the subject of my previous Japan Diary post). Tokyu Hands, part of the huge Takashimaya Department Store in Shinjuku, also has something for just about everyone on my list. They even stay open an extra hour every night until Christmas, to accommodate shoppers like myself who can only stop by on the way home from work.
The splendor of Tokyu Hands is easily a match for the grand department stores of New York.
Christmas decorations are also not hard to come by. Every year we get one or two new things to add to our collection. This year it was a brass angel for our tree from Kawagoe, and a Santa lantern that lights up and snows when you plug it in.
Here's the Santa lantern in action on top of our stereo.
We're almost all set for the big day! Tonight my daughter and I made our first batch of Christmas cookies. On this year's menu: fudge and snowball cookies. Buying the ingredients was somewhat painful. Everything comes in small quantities in Japan, so I had to get 5 packs of chocolate chips and 4 bags of powdered sugar. And everything is measured in grams, so unit conversions from my American recipes were needed to make sure the quantities came out right.
My daughter loves to help out with the dough.
Our twinkling living room, with fresh baked snowball cookies cooling on the table.
In Japan, the big day is not the 25th but rather Christmas Eve, which has been made into a romantic date night for young couples (think Valentine's Day the prequel). Older people don't really have much to do with Christmas, and the 25th itself is pretty much a non-event. That's when it's time to take down the decorations and start getting ready for New Year's.
But we celebrate in the American way, by waking up early on Christmas Day to open presents. Christmas is not actually a national holiday in Japan, so sometimes it's challenging getting the day off work, and we always have to make up excuses to pull my daughter out of school. But we always manage somehow. Happily the 25th is a Sunday this year so no worries this time.
So what's for Christmas dinner you ask? Wait for it... steak and lobster at Sizzler (yes, Japan has Sizzler). And for dessert, a Christmas cake that we ordered several days in advance. A special treat we can only indulge in once a year.
Christmas cakes, sold by bakeries & convenience stores up until the 24th, are an essential holiday must-have. Just like it wouldn't be a birthday without a cake, so too it wouldn't be Christmas in Japan without one of these.
Soon Santa will be coming to town! He stops by our apartment every year. Wonder what he'll leave in my stocking? As long as I believe, and have faith in my family, and love for my wife, it will never be empty on Christmas morning. Because ultimately, when all the commercial trappings are stripped away, faith and love are what this holiday's all about.
Links for more info
Previous entries in my Japan Diary series:
Hanging out with the ghosts of GeGeGe no Kitaro
Strolling around Showa Kinen Park
Winter vista illumination 2016 at Showa Kinen Park: https://www.sagaswhat.com/wintervista/
Showa Kinen Park official web site (in Japanese): http://www.showakinen-koen.jp/event/wintervistaillumination2016/
Time for a long winter's nap
This will be my final post of 2016. I'm going to take the next few weeks off to rest and spend quality time with my family. I'll be back in mid-January, re-charged and ready to hit the ground running with more great content for you, my dear readers.
In particular, early 2017 will see more entries in my House of Cards series about working in the finance industry. There will also be more cryptocurrency posts, possibly focusing on an introduction to Ethereum. And of course, more Japan Diaries for all you Japanophiles, sprinkled liberally between my more heavy duty posts.
This is @cryptomancer, signing out for the year. Keep calm, be jolly, and Steem on!
Image credits: the horizontal separator line and "Merry Christmas to all" banner are edits of graphics taken from Pixabay and used under Creative Commons CC0 . All other images in this post are photographs taken on my iPhone.
Achievement badges courtesy of @elyaque . Want your own? Check out his blog.