Our 2025 Santa Claus visit

One of the Christmas traditions I have worked hard to expose my children too, is the annual Santa Claus visit. It was such an important part of my childhood that I wanted to make sure my children had the pleasure of knowing the joy of visiting the real Santa Claus each year.

When my eldest was small, this was not something that was easy to accomplish as there were very few places in Saitama that offered a Santa Claus visit. Thankfully the first few years of both his and my two elder daughters life we were in Ireland for Christmas and we visited him there. Then eventually more places started offering Santa Claus visits in Japan and I found a great place to visit Santa Claus in Tochigi prefecture and we went there several years in a row.

However, in recent years, as my older three children are junior and senior high school students it hasn't been as easy to get to Tochigi at this time of the year. So for the last three years we have gone to a local department store where the real Santa (from Lapland, i.e. Finland) visits. And today, we went for our 2025 visit, pictured (sans the kids}! Its nice to have a photo of the kids with Santa Claus from each year.