Merry Christmas

Akasaka Prince Hotel

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm taking a break from my end-of year panic together with Ritsuko. We've had a non-traditional cross-cultural Christmas dinner (meaning fried chicken, apple salad, cake, cheese and wine) and I'm mellowing out with the last of the wine while writing this post.

To the left is Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo. It's a distinctive building in a pretty well-done 1970's style, and they apparently do some large-scale decorations for Christmas every year. This is the last Christmas though; it's slated to close and get torn down next year. Just to the right, beyond the edge of the picture, is restaurant Stockholm, where we had Swedish Smörgåsbord last week.

Oh, and we've had presents too, of course. Here's mine:

 

Otonona No Kagaku, Twin-lens reflex camera kit.

Otona No Kagaku is a great series of sciency kits for adults, with a new issue every few months. I've been eyeing this twin-lens camera kit ever since it was released early this year, and now Ritsuko gave it to me for Christmas. She knows me only too well I think.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas!

We're in Hokkaido for Christmas, where we're relaxing far away from the stresses of city life. We had a sleep in, had a long walk in the snow-covered countryside, I've just returned from a long soak in the hostel's hot spring bath, and with any luck we'll be stuffed to the gills with sushi and beer by tonight. And just so you see what we're leaving behind:

Crowds gather along Shinsaibashi shopping street to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. Go ahead, click on the image; it looks much better large.

Huge Friendly Duck says Merry Christmas!

Huge, Friendly Duck Is Back (And We're Leaving (but only temporarily))

The Huge rubber duck that floated by Nakanoshima island in Osaka this summer is back! There's a winter light festival happening along Nakanoshima southern beach, from the western end up to the City Hall, and the enormous rubber duck is also back for a repeat appearance. Which makes me inexplicably happy. The festival is apparently up until the 25th, so if you happen to be in Osaka, there's still a chance to go see it.

It's my favourite humongous friendly rubber duck, really. Surprisingly difficult to photograph, though. By the way, if you happen to go here, there's a really good, inexpensive Indian restaurant in the basement of the building just next to the duck. You can take the stairs from the riverside right to the back entrance.

In other news, we're leaving for our winter holiday in Hokkaido tomorrow morning. Which partly explains my relative silence here - I've been trying to finish up some stuff before we leave. We're going to Akan national park again, then to Sapporo for a couple of nights. It should be a lot of fun; I've been looking forward to this all autumn.

The trees along Nakanoshima are decorated, and there's some hot food stalls and things like that as well. Dress warm; the wind along the river is freezing.

There's some Christmas-themed displays as well. We only got this far before the cold got the better of us, so I don't really know what it looks like towards the City Hall.

One guy brought his parrot for a photo shoot. He had a padded cage and only brought it out for a minute or so. My guess is, he's making a New Year's card.

One in Three Stolen Cars Not

Beginning of the holidays and amazingly life manages to become more, not less, hectic. Anyway, a recent nugget of news from a Swedish paper is worth a break: One car in three reported stolen during December is actually not stolen at all (in Swedish).

People forget where they parked, or they mistakenly think they took the car when they didn't, and when they can't find their car they report it stolen. This happens throughout the year, but is especially common during christmas season. Large parking lots, lots of identical-looking cars, and the stress of the upcoming holidays all contribute. I'm not immune myself; I've thought my bicycle has been stolen more than once when I simply couldn't remember where I parked it.

Merry Christmas

Traditional Japanese Christmas cake.

Traditional Japanese Christmas fried chicken.

Really, it's no stranger than any of all the other odd foods eaten in various countries during Christmas. Many countries have turkey or pork - in Sweden it's a whole ham, eaten over several days. They eat goose in Germany, green cabbage and eel in southern Sweden while Finns and Russians eat pirogs. And fried chicken is certainly preferable to the lutfisk eaten - for reasons unknown to science - in Norway and northern Sweden.

Enjoy 12 Gatsu Style

So, another Christmas come and gone. As you know, Japan doesn't really celebrate Christmas and it might be a little instructive to consider why.

"Enjoy 12 gatsu style" - I don't blog about Japanese use of English as a rule, but this slogan from Hanshin department store in Umeda is deliciously ambivalent. At first glance it looks like English, with "december" incongruously replaced by the Japanese "12 gatsu". But I suspect it is actually all Japanese; "enjoy ... style" is a (lately annoyingly) common Japanese slogan formed from a couple of loanwords, but when written all in roman letters like it's looks close enough to English to fool you.

The origin of Christmas really is a set of midwinter solstice feasts throughout Europe. It's cold and dark and summer is a long way away, so having a feast to lift the spirits and celebrate the returning of the sun is a very natural idea. Later on, as christianity spread, the catholic church latched on to that celebration and made it a christian holiday as well. The "tacked on" nature is pretty evident, with old traditions superficially tweaked to fit the catholic mythology. As late as the mid-1900's many protestant christians would not celebrate Christmas, seeing it as a catholic-only holiday, and orthodox and other denominations still don't celebrate it.

But regardless of religious significance, the holiday has deep cultural roots in Europe and north America; whatever your religion - or if you aren't religious at all, as is the case for me and most scandinavians - it's still deeply satisfying to counter the darkest, coldest time of the year with some time off work and school, lots of good food and idle time with your family.

In Japan, of course, people want the same thing. And there is a big midwinter family feast with food, long-time traditions, and time off - the New Year, just a week later than Christmas. With no religious significance and no long traditions to fall back on Christmas is rather redundant here in other words. Indeed, the only parts that have been adopted or invented are those that don't really compete with the New Years celebration - bright lights and decorations in red and green, Christmas Cake and couples' romantic Christmas dinners rather than a family holiday. I would list annoyingly loud repetitive music and over-the-top shopping frenzy among the adoptions, but that is the normal state of being here after all; only the theme changes for a few weeks.

Lousy cold rainy weather much of the weekend. Doutonbori is always interesting though, no matter what the weather. The eagle-eyed long-time reader may notice that we got exactly the same Christmas cake as last year. Well, it's looks good and tastes great; why change a winner?

As luck would have it, this year was a long weekend, with Monday the 24th a day off for Emperor Showa's birthday. The weather was somewhat miserable last week and we both came down with a cold so apart from a year-end party on Saturday we didn't really go out; instead we spent much of the weekend indoors. We celebrated much the same way as we did last year - Japanese Christmas cake, Swedish hot spiced wine (the wine itself from Australia), Finnish pasties with Italian Bologna sausage and German mustard, Danish-made Brie cheese with caviar on French crackers - a testament to open trade and multiculturalism if nothing else.

Merry Christmas everyone!