Merry Christmas!
After a day of Christmas-feast-induced coma (we overindulged on import candy and burritos; nothin' says Merry Christmas like Old El Paso taco seasoning packets, Taco Bell taco sauce, Pace picante salsa and homemade guacamole), we're onto Boxing Day now. Japan has a surprisingly large Aussie population, so Boxing Day is big among the expats. The local Japanese think we're all nuts, but aren't the type to refuse any opportunity to celebrate. (Americans are the same; everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day.)
So the Japanese, at least from a marketing perspective, have adopted the trappings of Christmas wholesale--right down to Aaron Neville's beautiful version of "Ave Maria" being pumped thru the stores' sound systems while you shop. Many Japanese genuinely seek for the Christmas spirit, which is to say, they shop like mad and give each other gifts, but they have neither the cultural context nor the religious code to get the season exactly right. What do I mean when I say the Japanese don't do Christmas quite right? Some examples:
EXHIBIT A -- The Christmas Cake. Christmas cakes are immensely popular and a mainstay of the Japanese Christmas Tradition. Therefore, you'll pre-order "Christmas cake" from your favorite bakery or department store sometime in mid-November. These are stunningly beautiful whipped cream, strawberry and white cake mini-cathedrals that would do most wedding planners proud. Yet why Christmas cake? No one could satisfactorily answer my query until I saw a Japanese guy's list of things he associated with Christmas...number three was "fruit cake". The Japanese have taken the traditional European homage to the preservation of the harvest in days before refrigeration -- the nasty brick of fruitcake filled with candied and dried bits of what-at-one-time was fruit -- and broken it down to its components, namely, fruit and cake. They then abandon the need to make the thing taste hideous with the dried and candied goo and replace this with delicate and attractive (if perishable) fresh fruit cakes -- Christmas cake.
EXHIBIT B -- Sexy + Christmas. Wanna know where you can buy Christmas-themed S&M gear? In Tokyo is where. Here, Christmas is more of a couples' holiday, more akin to the US Valentine's Day than anything else. New Year's is the family gift-giving occasion, so for Christmas, one usually finds guys giving their sweethearts jewelry, chocolates, or other fancy knick-knacks. The ladies will give gifts in kind, but some choose to reciprocate in more risque ways.
So while searching for the elusive Christmas tree angel (the Japanese almost exclusively use stars to top their trees here), I had the pleasure of perusing white-fur-trimmed red-velvet thongs with accompanying Santa hat and red fishnet stockings, an array of "Mrs. Claus" satin teddies in festive Christmas prints, bras and corsets in seasonal colors, and, of course, white fur trimmed hand-cuffs. Am I shopping in the Red Light district? No, this is where I go to get my shampoo and diet soda.
(I will, however, admit to this shop, Don Quixote, being a bit skanky. Either through some horrid mis-translation or simply a odd sense of humor on the part of the store management, they group "toys" together, whether they be children's or adult. So you'll be looking at X-men, Power Rangers, and Pink Panther merchandise, then three meters down the same shelf you'll have vibrators, "love oil" and a full range of other "toys" for the pruriently inclined. I've seen this odd grouping of "toys" in at least one other major chain, so I'm inclined to believe that it isn't a malicious attack on the sensibilities of Japanese kids. But I digress....)
Because our timing was off and we hadn't gotten all of our shopping done in time, we broke the sabbath by shopping on Sunday the 24th. God punished us by inspiring all 25 million inhabitants of the Kanto Plain to descend on the shopping area we went to. I understand that shopping on Sundays is atrocious here in Tokyo. Add Christmas crowds and us, and the result was a crush of humanity that somehow formed a very orderly sort of mayhem. Just getting there was difficult. It took us about 45 minutes to move seven kilometers and another half hour to be directed into a parking spot. (No having to look for a spot in Japan; guys in uniforms with walkie talkies directly you exactly to the nearest open parking space and then help you back in safely, as the spaces are generally pretty tight.) Inside were masses of tightly jammed people shuffling to their respective destinations. After missing two downward elevators on account of excess crowds, we went from the seventh floor to the thirteenth, just so we could take that elevator down to the basement. Our efforts did pay off, though. We all had a very nice Christmas. Now if I could only remember where we put the Rolaids....
