All we want for Christmas in Japan is …

Christmas in Japan can be an odd time of year for the expat living in Japan who loves the festive season. Or who has memories of having once loved the festive season, like this expat. It’s not that Christmas in Japan doesn’t turn out dressed up in all the seasonal finery because it emphatically does, and it even has the Wham! soundtrack to boot. Perhaps the festive funk stems from a Japan that, try as it might, just doesn’t seem to get it, as well as our own flailing efforts to recreate the magic of the season as a child … back home … surrounded by family. Futile.  

The shortcomings of Christmas in Japan then make it easy to tune into the spirit of the Grinch and have a cathartic cynical-expat moan about it all. Not to the extent that we want to see it cancelled but just because, underneath it all, we like remembering and sharing in the good times, perhaps in the hope of recreating them again this time around. And this isn’t riding on the misguided assumption that everyone should love or celebrate Christmas. Far from it. But it is, perhaps, the most visually apparent theme in Japan right now and something we'd like to address in this editorial.

And besides, we think we’ve been well behaved enough that we might be so bold as to compose a Japan-themed Christmas wishlist. So without further ado, all we want for Christmas in Japan this year is …  

… for the Christmas decorations to go up a little later

November marks that time of year when media run pieces about psychiatrists assuring festive-season eager beavers in the West that it’s OK, nay, better for the mind that the Christmas decorations go up as early as possible.  

“When you’re putting up decorations, you’re thinking of happier times, times with family and friends and family traditions you engaged in,” psychotherapist Amy Morin was quoted in ABC News out of Tampa Bay, U.S. earlier this month.

“It makes people feel good so they want to start celebrating as early as possible,” she said.

Can we draw from this the conclusion that Japan must be one of the happiest countries in the world … in November?

While a hung-over collective of post-Shibuya-street-party youths is still wiping off their Halloween gore, Japan’s shopkeepers and department store interior designers are getting busy stringing up the festive fairy lights as backroom management presses play on the Wham! and Mariah Carey.

With a vacuum of anything else to celebrate -- read “market” -- Japan races into Christmas in November before the Christmas-celebrating expat living in Japan has even contemplated what they might want included in a festive-season care package from the folks back home. 

It’s just too early (Isn’t it?) and only serves to dampen the excitement when Christmas actually does arrive (as much as it really does on these shores), by which time Japan is already getting in line to snap up New Year’s fukubukuro, those lucky-dip sales bags stuffed full of items that a few days ago nobody had any interest in. 

… for the same Christmas decorations to be taken down a little later

Japan can’t wait for the New Year. The country loves it so much the people here even do their “spring clean” in frigid December temperatures to make sure they’re all spruce and sanitized for the occasion. Meanwhile a sizable segment of the world is doing their best to hide from it, slobbed out on the sofa watching Santa Claus The Movie, scoffing down Milk Tray.  

There’s nowhere to hide in Japan though. As soon as the clock strikes midnight after Christmas Day, Japan’s seasonal decorators and technicians deploy with military zeal to strip the country of it’s gaudy festive glory and replace it with the significantly glitter and shine-free traditional trappings of the new year. And if you thought these sedate ornaments to be representative of something more serious and contemplative than the commercial free-for-all that Christmas in Japan, or anywhere in the world, can sometimes appear, just remember that the children here look forward to New Year’s not for any sense of magic or wonder but because their version of the Christmas present is an envelope stuffed with cash. 

Still, at least Japan affords the populace a few days grace to nurse New Year’s hangovers before sending everyone back to work. 

… an interesting work Christmas party

Maybe we’re looking at the work Christmas parties back home through those rose-tinted spectacles the expat often gets fitted with after years away from the motherland. Perhaps we’ve forgotten about the awful hangovers, the secret Santa hassles and disappointments, the regrettable rounds of tonsil hockey (or lack thereof), the ill-advised verbal boss-bashing, the unflattering Santa hats, the tinsel-based fashion faux pas …

They were nothing if not interesting though. They had music (Wham!, Slade, East 17, Mariah, The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, Phil Spector, Band Aid), terrible singing, maybe some dancing, streamers, Christmas crackers, … and perhaps most importantly, something to talk about after the fact, or at least something that you would have to make an effort to forget. And they were a genuine release. An unhindered, “Thank f@#k it’s the holidays.”  

Christmas in Japan doesn’t really come with festive work parties. Instead we have bounenkai -- all-too-often civilized, time-limited, designated-seating sit-downs in some tight-for-space boozer where we have to politely pour each others drinks, pretend to be interested in the boss’s speech and play a game of musical chairs (without the music) every time we need to go and pee.

The irony is that Japan’s bounenkai -- the end-of-year bash -- are traditionally held so as we can collectively forget about the troubles of the past year when what we all really forget is the bounenkai itself, as soon as we’re on the train back home. Lifestyle habit tells me that I must have gone to a handful of bounenkai last year but I hand-on-heart can’t remember any of them. I still can’t forget the crappy moments at work though.  

… a real slice of Christmas cake

Christmas in Japan sees the decorations go up early but this expat’s family sets about preparing the Christmas cake just as promptly, if not more so to give it time to mature.  

To be fair, Japan does put on a pretty spectacular Christmas display (at least the shops do) and the Christmas cakes over here are similarly bedecked with all the bells and whistles of the festive season. Except they’re not really Christmas cakes, are they? They’re a strawberry sponge in fancy dress.   

Without wanting to get philosophical about the matter, or to suggest that there should be some universal truth about what constitutes a Christmas cake (even though we know it to be a pimped-up fruit cake), we deferred to the wisdom of the Internet to tell us what a Christmas cake is. 

Much to our disturbance toward the top of our search results we’re told that the term “Christmas cake” originates from Japan … according to some form of urban diction. 

“A woman 26 years+ who is considered to be past her prime, undesirable, used goods and/or no good,” reads the top entry for “Christmas Cake” in Urban Dictionary.

According to the source, the term was coined by that ever-reliable soothsayer of wisdom the Japanese businessman apparently referencing Christmas cake uneaten after the big day and being left to spoil. As a result ...

“Japanese women over the age of 26 most often have to rely on either a hastily semi-arranged marriage to a friend of the family or, more frequently, marry a foreigner as they are rarely aware of the stigma or don't care.”

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so gross and patently not true. For a start, more fool the Japanese businessman (if we take this at face value) because we all know that real Christmas cake gets better with age and sticks around for the longer-term (back home slices of the stuff used to be in our lunch boxes for school long after the rest of Christmas had been put into storage). 

And the untruths continue -- this expat, at least, has had about as much success in finding real Christmas cake in Japan as they have had encounters with a Japanese person in their mid-twenties looking to settle down on account of their age and my being a foreigner. Which is to say never.  

Still, for an inflated price the Christmas-cake hungry expat living in Japan can get their hands on a slice or two of stollen, that fruity, nutty, sugar-coated bread popular in Germany during the festive season. Keep your eyes out next time you’re in posh supermarket or imported food store, or one of the many German markets that spring up across Japan in December.

… to not have to work

For many children crawling up the walls in anticipation of Christmas Day the idea that some adults have to work on December 25 is probably more mind-blowing than the idea of a rotund pensioner being able to deliver presents to half the households in the world over the course of a single night.   

At least it was for this expat as a child. Fast-forward a couple of decades and I’m an English teacher in Japan bemoaning the fact that students have had the gaul to book lessons with me on Christmas Day. Heathens! 

No, Christmas Day might be synonymous with magic and wonder for many back home, but in Japan it could well mean just another day at work. For those expats living and working in Japan for whom the festive season really is (or was), in the words of U.S. crooner Andy Williams, “the most wonderful time of the year,” early experiences of Christmas Day on the train into work here in Japan can come as a blunt-force shock. Does it get better over time? Maybe. Christmas in Japan can be a weird experience for the Christmas-celebrating expat anyway and spending December 25 alone in one’s apartment save for a Lilliputian Christmas tree can perhaps give us an insight into why some people actually dread it. Better to go into work then? 

With Japan’s propensity for somewhat randomly-themed national holidays (Mountain Day, anyone?) though, you’d think perhaps Christmas Day would be a reasonable shout. There seems to be no takers so far.  

Waiting for it to fall on a weekend would appear to be the best bet for some then. Next to happen in 2021.  

Whatever you’re doing during Christmas in Japan this year, whether you’re celebrating or not, we hope you’re all well and enjoying life in Japan.

Let us know what you’re up to, or what might be on your Christmas wishlist in the comments.

Image: Takashi Hososhima, Flickr license