Christmas FAQ

I've been getting a lot of questions about Christmas in Japan.  They are all very good questions with interesting answers, so I decided to do a FAQ post to address some of them. 

What is Christmas like over there?

Japanese people are very into Christmas.  I'm not sure any of them really know what the holiday is actually about, but they love the commercial aspects of the holiday.  Department stores play Christmas music, Starbucks has their red cups (of course when I finally got my first cup of Starbucks last week, they were out and I got a regular white cup), and illuminations are everywhere.  Illuminations are what Japanese people call their Christmas light displays around town.  Some are very simple- a few strings of lights in some of the trees along the streets.  Others are much more elaborate.  They go up around the end of November and you see them everywhere.  Here are a few we've stumbled across:

Pretty blue trees in Toyosu

A floating tree in Roppongi Hills

Christmas tree made of recycled bottles in Shinjuku

Are the Santas in Japan Japanese?

This is a harder question.  I never saw a Santa in the mall or anything, but I did stumble across this article about a real authorized Santa who is Japanese.  So there you have it.  Plus, on Christmas day I came across these guys on the sidewalk:

Japanese kids handing out candy on the street

As they passed by me taking a picture of them, the smallest kid said "Melly Chreestmas," and gave me three pieces of candy!  It was so cute.  I think they were part of some charity organization. 

What do Japanese people eat on Christmas?

My favorite questions, of course.  It turns out there is a Christmas dinner tradition in Japan.  It doesn't involve turkey. ham, or goose.  Although if you are searching for that kind of meal, many restaurants offer traditional western Christmas dinners.  If you want to do like the Japanese do, then you eat fried chicken.

When I first heard that it was customary to eat fried chicken on Christmas, I thought my coworkers were pulling my leg.  Most of them have lived in Japan for much longer than me, so I'm a pretty easy target when it comes to these things.  But it's true.  Do you know how I know it's true?  CNN.  If CNN says it, it must be true.  I managed to catch that link just a few days before Christmas.  I wanted in on this!  Now everyone knows, Popeyes is far superior to KFC.  But since Popeyes is about two hours away, we decided to hop on the McDonalds bandwagon.  After calling ahead to ensure they wouldn't sell out, we walked the ten minute walk to get our iCon box.  Don't ask me why it's called iCon.

Behold- our 2010 Christmas feast awaits

Mega fries, 2 shaka shaka chickens, 2 boxes of strips, 2 boxes of nuggets, sauces and seasonings

It was quite tasty.  I couldn't eat my chicken strips, so I brought them home to eat later (cold of course).  In case you are unfamiliar with shaka shaka chicken, it's basically a piece of flattened chicken breast that is fried and placed in a small paper bag.  You open the top of your shaka shaka chicken bag, and add in some seasoning.  We had the choice of pizza, black pepper, and cheese seasonings.  You then close the bag, and shake to your heart's delight.  The end result is a coated piece of chicken.  I opted to eat mine plain, but i did dip a bite or two into the pizza seasoning to see what it was like.  Not my cup of tea.  McDonalds here tastes exactly like back home.  But I did miss my sweet and sour sauce.  Much to my dismay, the green sauce packet was actually sour cream and onion.  Oh well.

So in the end, we had a very authentic Japanese Christmas meal.  It was interesting, but maybe next year we'll start a new tradition.  Christmas sushi?  Christmas burgers?  Who knows? 

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas back home!  What did YOU eat?