There’s been some drama.
As 2022 careens to its chaotic climax, I hit a wall in my own writing. I was wisely advised to take a break and to focus on other things (like some essays and my website). Since I do my own website design (using WordPress), I thought a redesign would engage my creativity.
It did (even though the redesign is far from complete) but it also required a lot of back-and-forth with my site host because, of course, bugs. At the same time, my newsletter provider let me know that they were doubling their prices, so I scrambled to get my content and email list from them before switching to a different (free) service.
This issue of Out of Japan is therefore a test of that new service. Fingers crossed it all works.
Christmas in Japan is, like many imported cultural experiences there (like Halloween, convenience stores, and fast food), familiar at the surface and then bewildering the deeper you go.
Santa Claus iconography is abundant. Christmas lights (called イルミネーション, illumination, in Japanese although I naturally prefer the Britishism, fairy lights) are abundant. Holiday sales are everywhere. Parents delight in offering their children presents on Christmas morning.
The lights along Omote-Sandō were this beautiful even during the 1990s.
But…
Christmas Eve at home in Japan presents one of the greatest tales of marketing hype ever. At some point in the 1970s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, eager to boost sales in their new territory of Japan, proclaimed that it was American custom to have fried chicken for Christmas Eve dinner. Although they now also sell roasted chicken, KFC for Christmas Eve is amazingly present. I tend to think that dressing the Colonel Sanders statues that wait outside each franchise in the (Coca-Cola red) Santa hat and jacket adds to the selling power.
What else is on the menu? Christmas cake. Although some Japanese, my husband among them, prefer the French bûche de Noël (and if you’re in Tōkyō, Top*s Bakery in Akasaka makes an amazing one), the traditional Japanese Christmas has more in common with a strawberry shortcake. In between layers of the softest yellow sponge reside halved strawberries, their sweet perfection enrobed with whipped cream. More whipped cream and more strawberries decorate the cake’s exterior as well, and upon a chocolate plaque at the cake’s pinnacle, greetings of Merry Christmas exult you!
Itadakimasu!
Christmas Eve is also one of the biggest date nights in Japan. Restaurant (and hotel—more on that shortly) reservations are booked solid, more so than on either Saint Valentine’s Day (when women give gifts to men) or on White Day (an equally capitalistic holiday on March 14th when men give gifts to women).
And why are hotels fully booked, you ask? This phenomenon has a new name. When Hiro first mentioned it to me, he said せいのろくじかん (sei no rokujikan).
Unsure of the character for sei, I asked 聖書の聖？ (The sei as in seisho (the Bible, literally sacred writing)
He laughed and corrected me: 性別の性 (the sei as in gendered, meaning sex)
So it is 性の六時間, the six hours of sex.
I’m not exactly sure how data might have been acquired, but the six hours beginning at nine in the evening on Christmas Eve and ending at three, early on Christmas morning, account for lion’s share of sexual activity in Japan.
My readers will be gratified to learn that I asked Hiro to pencil me in for at least one of those six hours.
Let me come back to Christmas cake for a bit, because there is a (typically misogynistic) metaphor in Japanese based on it.
As sad as it would be to be an unsold Christmas cake on December 26th, so too, in misogynistic thinking, would it be for a woman to be unmarried at age twenty-six. Such women are therefore revoltingly referred to as unsold Christmas cake. And they wonder why birth rates are declining in Japan…
Assuming this newsletter successfully reaches you all, I will have another one to share in early January about New Year customs.
Before I go, as noted here, a short essay of mine, Bending Time, has won a nonfiction award.
In addition my latest book review, for Halfway from Home by Sarah Fawn Montgomery, has gone live here.
Lastly, the first two pages of my in-progress memoir, Crying in a Foreign Language: The Deity That Answered My Plea, have been accepted for inclusion in queer-centered ‘zine called Messy Misfits. I hope to have more to share in my next issue of Out of Japan.
