Christmas in Japan

"Are you going anywhere for winter break?" it's a question I get a lot. Half the time the question is not "are you going" but rather "where are you going". There is an inherent assumption that if I'm going to be anywhere this Christmas, it will not be here. I generally explain my decision to stay here as financial "going home is expensive" or seasonal "I hate winter, and cannot in good conscience move any closer to it". These are valid points, but half-truths at best. Honestly, I'm just really curious as to what Christmas alone, in a strange land with only the vaguest grasp of Christmas, will be like. I have explained my theory of novel unpleasant experiences to some of you before. Even if it's awful, depressing, and soul-crushingly lonely, I've never actually done it. Maybe it'll be interesting. I'm the kid who probably touched the stove full aware that it would burn him, because he was curious what being burned felt like.

Christmas in Japan is what you would get if you observed an American Christmas from a long range spy plane, with a telescope. Cosmetically, things manage to come out as an eerily close approximation of the American tradition. There are lights on houses, things resembling trees,albeit made of plastic or fiber-optic cables (which are way cool, by the way). Presents are exchanged, people sit out front of grocery stores and collect money for charity (although when I asked them what the charity was, they couldn't actually tell me. I'm hoping this was a language issue, although I suspect it was not). Occasionally one even witnesses the wearing of tacky seasonal sweaters and ties. Christmas music fills the radio waves, classic Christmas favorites remastered in Japanese, and rarely some that manage the trans-Pacific almost entirely intact. Aside from the pervasive Christmas cake phenomenon (French, I think?) Japanese Christmas is pretty darn close, as long as you don't scratch at the foil. The problem is that somehow, thorough all this, the part of Christmas which always made Christmas a special time got overlooked. It reminds me of Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas. "This looks like fun this looks like fun, oh could it be I got my wish?" But then what he tries to make once he goes back to Halloween town just goes horribly awry.

I have never been particularly imbued with Christmas cheer. I have fond memories, but by the time I was in high school Christmas had started feeling like a day I was quickly outgrowing. I think it happens to a lot of people. The awkward gap between the time when you are a little kid, sweating with anticipation unable to sleep with thoughts of the bounty that is to come, and the the time when you have little kids of your own. The gap between believing the story of Santa and getting to turn around and tell this wonderful lie to future generations. Still, despite this relative lack of giddy Christmas excitement, I have always appreciated how the season itself manages to feel somehow different. Everywhere you look, people seem to be conspiring together in the cause of general mirth. I once challenged a friend of mine who was still head-over-heels for Christmas to explain why she liked it so much. "The true spirit of Christmas" she replied, without irony or embarrassment. The true spirit of Christmas. It is the one part of Christmas which Japan does not have. And the only part which you really need in order to call it Christmas.

There is plenty of other stuff to look forward to during this season on Japan. There are the endless Bounenkai, end-of-year parties which are written using the kanji forget-year-party, a feat which they take both seriously and literally if the amount of drinking is any indicator. There is Oshogatsu, the Japanese New Year, which is the real winter holiday in Japan which I'll be spending with my dear friends the Yoda's and their two daughters who are in from Tokyo and Kyoto. And I'm quite glad to be able to have these experiences, wonderful, rare and certainly new. But tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, when I'm sitting around in the office learning Japanese since classes are over for the year, I can't help but wonder if I'll be a little bit sad that for the first time in my life, the 25th will just be another work day.