LOVE CHRISTMAS!

Things have settled down now post-New Year holiday and all that. I've finally returned to soccer after 4 months or so sidelined with my stupid ankle injury. I played a great return match scoring two goals but perhaps more enjoyable was the fact that my Japanese skills have improved so noticeably that my team mates commented. I still feel like I would put myself in the "cannot speak Japanese" basket largely because my ability to construct sentences is still hopeless. However my listening and reading and writing skills have improved drastically so while I might not be able to answer many questions correctly, I can follow a conversation so long as the topic stays away from existentialism or economic theory.

I want to return to my previous style of relatively short entries on interesting topics, so in that vain here comes a piece on Christmas, Japanese style. I know it's late and it would have been much more interesting and relevant pre-December 25th but oh well.

I'm sure 99% of you are aware that Japan is not a Christian nation. Hence Christmas is wonderfully free from any Christian ties (if they even exist in Australia anymore). It is a perfectly capitalist event now with the almighty dollar (or yen) the only god. Japanese Christmas in a nutshell is more like Valentine's Day with a splash of a strange Santa/reindeer motif. Here are a few pictures I found on Google that might explain it better than my words can.


That there is a bentou (lunchbox) in Christmas style.

Christmas is so unimportant here that it isn't even a public holiday. The most important part of the entire affair is Christmas Eve when couples get together for romantic dinners and walks around town admiring the insanely tasteless Christmas light displays. If you've ever wondered what cherubs, love hearts, mermaids, dolphins, and trains have to do with Christmas, come to Hiroshima next Christmas and take a walk down Peace Boulevard where you will be able to see all the aforementioned and much more in twinkling light displays up to 30m tall.

Another crucial part of Japanese Christmas is the Christmas cake. Ahh, something in common with our own you're thinking. No such luck I'm afraid. This is Japanese Christmas cake.


I'm not sure if you can read the price tags there but they seem to start at around 2,500 yen (-AUD27) for the tiny ones. I got to sample a few and I must say they are entirely unimpressive and bland. Plain sponge cake with generic icing, whipped cream and strawberries on top. There are fantastic cakes available in Japan (especially in Kobe) but the Christmas cake ain't a great example.

Quite a number of my students were generally surprised to learn of the difference between an Australian Christmas and their own. They were particularly shocked to learn that we don't eat Christmas cake anything like the monsters pictured above. The fact that in Australia, one of the only times of the year I eat oysters (at least regularly) is on Christmas day seemed to amuse them.

Being away from Australia and all my family and friends at Christmas made me realise a few things (close window now if you want to avoid personal waffle now). Being an atheist, Christmas has nill religious significance for me but that doesn't mean that I can't or don't enjoy some of the religious music of the season. Furthermore I do think Christmas in Australia is a really nice vehicle for family and friends to get together and have a jolly good time. Christmas changed a lot for me when I moved out of home and being absent from my family Christmas(es - one perk of separated parents is the dual Christmas) definitely made me long for the sight of a table covered in delicious treats and the satisfied post-meal relaxation on the couch. The holiday has clearly been savagely beaten by capitalism and if people want to agree to shift the date for their own family get-together to another time that doesn't coincide with inflated prices and massive crowds then go for it. In one regard this is why I envy the Canadians with their Thanksgiving. From what my new Canadian friends tell me, it seems to be the same family-oriented festival of food but without the tacky trappings of Christmas.

Oh, the title of this post "LOVE CHRISTMAS" comes courtesy of the enormous light display on the biggest department store in Hiroshima. I don't think they mean it so sound like an imperative but that's how it sounded to me since it was positioned above the masses of cashed-up shoppers flowing in and out of the department store.