Christmas Japanese Style

It was a very Japanese Christmas here in the Asby-Sitterson household. We started out the festivities on Christmas Eve by consuming what we later found out was a typical dinner for the night before Christmas: pizza. We also had a Christmas cake. It wasn't your typical fruitcake recycled from last year's pile of unwanted gifts. The Japanese make cute little cakes with Christmas decorations and loads of icing and charge you $30 to share it with your sweetie. Luckily, we waited until the last minute to buy one for ourselves and got a cheap one half-off at the grocery store minus all of the frills and extra icing. It was still a tasty end to our traditional Japanese Christmas Eve feast. One of my Japanese coworkers was surprised to hear that Americans don't have these cakes on Christmas Eve. When I explained that pumpkin or pecan pie was more common, she looked confused and said, "Your culture is so different." Yes, it is indeed often different than the Japanized version so popular here.

Our evening continued with some Christmas Carol Karaoke. The plan was to sing only Christmas songs all night long to ring in the holiday, but we eventually ran out of Christmas themed tunes and had to throw in a few cheesy non-Christmas songs. We started out the night strong with Mariah Carey's classic "All I Want for Christmas is You." A bunch of uber-Christmasy songs such as "Jingle Bells," "Winter Wonderland," and "Silent Night" followed. We then introduced Dustin to some Christmas tunes new to him. He pointed out that "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid is quite a downer on such a joyous occasion. "Last Christmas" by WHAM! and "Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys and "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" by John Lennon made appearances on the playlist. The funniest moment of our blessed Christmas Eve singing came when the version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" that we chose turned out to be a rendition by City High. Imagine this church hymn sprinkled with "Baby" and "City High up in here!" Quite humorous.

Dustin instructed me to let him sleep until 11:00 on Christmas morning, so the coffee was waiting at 11:01. We opened the gifts that we miraculously kept unopened for about a month; they lived under our tiny tree in the Christmas corner, constantly tempting us. As per Christmas tradition, we made our presents useful immediately. Dustin spent most of the day playing his new Wii game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed while I read David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice and flipped through Lonely Planet Japan. I was highly disappointed (though not surprised) to discover that Nagaoka wasn't mentioned in the 868 page book even once. What was said about our rural prefecture, Niigata, failed to surprise as well. The famous rice and sake was mentioned beside the ski resorts and onsen. I had long since come to terms with the fact that I live in the boonies, but I hoped, for a brief second, that once I got my hands on the extensive Lonely Planet Japan guidebook, certainly something I hadn't yet discovered would be brought to my attention. Luckily, the rest of Japan is just a short train ride away. And all of the staples of Japan can be found in our tiny little town.

Once dinnertime rolled around, we pulled ourselves from our new toys and headed out on an adventure to partake in another traditional holiday meal in Japan. The Japanese eat a hearty meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas night. We hoped that we'd be able to squeeze our way into our local KFC for a nice meal. When we walked out the door dressed warmly (It was 3° C!), we were assaulted by big drops of rain. We opened our umbrellas and set out on our mission to meet The Colonel. About two minutes into our journey, the rain turned into little pellets of hail. Yes, folks. We braved a hail storm just to get some fried chicken and corn. Eventually, we made it. Turns out, the Japanese order buckets of chicken for Christmas in advance; they just come in, pick it up, and eat it at home with their families. Most of these people drove up in their cars, scampered in to retrieve one of the bags lining the counters and open table-tops, and returned to their warm houses by car. Since we arrived on foot, we decided to dine in. We had the entire restaurant to ourselves. Dustin had a chicken sandwich, whose name included both teriyaki and fire, some fries, and a biscuit with maple syrup. I had some cold corn and furi furi potato. Furi furi potato are basically french fries in a take out bag with your choice of flavor packets. You dump in your packet of flavor, shake, and enjoy. I chose yakisoba flavor, which is a type of Japanese noodle dish. It was the second oddest holiday meal I've had yet. (The oddest being the Christmas Eve dinner I shared with my dad and sister at Hooters on the year that my mom had to work the graveyard shift. Not much was open on that Christmas Eve in North Kansas City...)

Our Christmas ended in the wee hours of the morning. After KFC, we braved what had turned into a snow storm to get to 7-11 to call Dustin's family, who hadn't heard from us in a while. I had my new gloves to keep my hands warm and my rainboots to keep my feet dry, but it was the coldest phone call I've ever made. We got smart once the phone card we had ran out and hurried back home to make the remainder of our calls on Skype in the comfort of our own home. Speaking of Skype... It's a free and easy way to "talk on the phone" via your computer. All we have to do is set up a time when we'll both be at our computers and it's like I'm within reach, only 15 hours in the future. What I'm saying is, call me please, but let me know when, so I can answer. Just a reminder, my Skype name is danasitterson. We still have about $8 of Skype credit, so if you don't have the internet, you might be able to bribe me to call you on an actual phone for a rather short conversation. 

From now on, we'll be putting links to full photo albums on the blog. You may have noticed a new addition to the sidebar directly to your right called "Captured on Film." Currently, you'll see the names of five different albums. Clicking each link will take you straight to the albums of photos I post on facebook, so all of you who have decided not to waste time on facebook can see the pictures without having to sign up for your own account. Enjoy! 

I'll get back to you next year. Have fun during the rest of '08.