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Published: December 26th 2007
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A clown style Father Xmas!?!
interesting Japanese twist on Santa! For weeks Christmas lights have been up, carols and jingles have been playing in shops and pubs, and department stores have been decked out with Christmas trees, bells and holly. But Japan has been teasing me. Yesterday there was no Christmas!
You see Japan embraces all things Christmas (in its own, sometimes odd way), apart from Christmas day itself! So I spent yesterday sat at my desk in my office passing the time with a cup of green tea (oh how I missed my martini’s) daydreaming about Christmases long gone. The roaring fire in the front room, the smell of pine needles filling the house, dad in the kitchen in his novelty apron, grandma nodding off in the corner after being plied with sherry all day (a cunning plan to get some piece and quiet!), and, dare I say it, the X-Factor Christmas special!
I tried my best to make Christmas like Christmas. I sat there in my novelty Christmas earrings (which some people embarrassingly thought was just my normal taste in jewelry), with my 3 Christmas cards up and some silver stars sprinkled on my desk! At lunch time I ordered the closest thing I could find to
turkey, roast potatoes, chipolata sausages, mountains of veg with chestnuts, Yorkshire pudding, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, red wine infused gravy, ummmmm, sorry where was I? Yes I ordered a chicken leg with 2 boiled new potatoes and some (pretty disgusting) gravy. It came with a bowl of rice of course!
So as you can see I had a somewhat ‘different’ Christmas this year. Luckily for me the 24th was a national holiday (the emperor’s birthday fell on the Sunday which meant the Monday was a holiday in lieu), so I had my own little fake Christmas. I opened my Christmas presents, yes I did receive some! Wooo hoooo! Although the post regulations did a good job in spoiling the surprise. The package I received from my aunty Mandy said ‘contains 100% wool jumper. Value 20 pounds’! I did scribble it out with pen in the hope that i would forget and have a surprise when I opened it, but no such luck! I’m just too dam intelligent to fool myself like that. The afternoon/evening was spent in the pub with Scott Massey from school! It was almost like being in the Boot (the Upton High pub of choice for
a xmas cake
This is actually a regular sponge cake with cream and strawberries. The Japanese think that a xmas cake is just a normal cake with a santa on! xmas eve’s), except there were only 2 of us and the beer didn’t taste like piss. It was a good night. I crawled into bed at about 1am and dragged myself out again at 7am to get ready for work. I should also mention that I received a visitor in the night on Christmas Eve! I left my stocking hung on my bedroom door and in the morning there was a twix and a chocolate (with seaweed flavour filling - errghkk) inside! I have not been able to find the culprit so I can only assume it was Santa himself!
New year is a much bigger holiday in Japan, and you do actually get some time off work, so I will be able to enjoy the festivities and relaxation time then. We have already had our office Bounenkai (end of year party) and it was, typically, odd. We went to Ginza, a very expensive district in Tokyo, to a restaurant on the 26th floor! It had amazing views! When we got there the door was closed, then this girl wearing a satin thong bodice, fishnets, stilettos, and bunny ears and a tail opened the door! I thought we were
xmas eve
me and Scott doing the Boot ala Tokyo at a strip club! The mat at the door stated that we were at a gentlemen’s private members club! Me, Chris (German colleague) and the Wu-Tang Clan (Japanese colleague) all tuned around and looked at each other with the same wide eyed expression of shock and amusement plastered across our faces! It turned out to be a ‘normal’ Shabu Shabu restaurant (where u put your own beef and vegetables in a pot of boiling water at the table) just with half naked bunny girls as waitresses! (Sorry guys no photos allowed!). It must have cost our boss an absolute fortune! The funniest moment of the night came after I made a comment about the beef shrinking quite a lot in the water. Shacho (CEO) turned to Miura San (director) and told her that she should probably consider getting in the Shabu Shabu pot herself! Of course this was all said in Japanese so it took a while for me to convince someone to tell me what he had said! It seems office parties are the same wherever you are in the world!
Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Pawel
non-member comment
Xmas
hhaha i see you had good time. keep on writing. pawel xxx