Merry Kurisumasu!

Dearest D: Thank you for my iTunes gift certificate. I spent most of the night browsing and downloading music. I am now the proud “owner” of some new/old Tom Petty, Missy Elliot, Cat Stevens, Chemical Brothers, Bruce Springsteen and a couple of others that fit into that rowdy mix about as well as--well, as any one of the others really. It was a perfect gift!

Kurisumasu Keki = Christmas Cake

So, one of the things that the Japanese do for Christmas (besides romantic dinners and love hotel visits) is eat Christmas cake. Now, Christmas cake is not our dreaded fruitcake (which I love, by the way), nor is it even remotely similar to German stollen (also love it). In fact, you can find stollen in Tokyo--even in Higashi-Mukojima, as I found yesterday at the tiny TOBU market near the station. But, no, Japanese Christmas cake resembles none of these.

Japanese Christmas cake is more like a spongy strawberry shortcake, light and airy and very unseasonal to my mind. Honto, I don’t know what the impetus to eat strawberries in the winter is because right now, they’re running about one hundred yen per strawberry. That’s right--about a dollar per strawberry. And you know what? People are buying them. Why? Because it’s Christmas, and Christmas means strawberries and especially strawberry Christmas cake.

Christmas in Japan also means all the convenience store clerks are duty bound to dress in Santa outfits. Now, this is Japan, where genki rules--at least on television and at Tokyo Disneyland. But honto, in Higashi-Mukojima, those poor 7-11 clerks are no happier than any bored part-timer in any convenience store in the US. I mean, think about it, low wages and humiliation? Who wouldn’t go for it? I mean, I do, and I don’t even have to wear a Santa outfit.

Ah, Christmas.

Christmas in Japan means shopping. (Big change from the US, right?) But, Christmas in Japan--for a gaijin from the West anyway--means hours spent in department stores looking for a simple thing like wrapping paper. Honto ni, wrapping paper of the kind that Mal-wart carries mountains and mountains of--is nonexistent. Even in a city as large and cosmopolitan as Tokyo, there is no wrapping paper. Not in the department stores, not in the dollar stores, not in the stationary stores. Of course, there is no wrapping paper because each and every store obligingly wraps every damn thing with layers and layers of paper. And so during Christmas, all they do is add a layer of cherry-red paper and a gold bow to the outside and everyone is happy. Everyone is happy, that is, except me. (Roll your eyes and think: But you’re never happy, Garcia. Oh, just do it. I’ll wait.) Okay, anyway--I bought one large package that, much to the dismay of the woman from I whom I purchased said package, couldn’t be wrapped. It was too big. Honto, the woman added handles to it. (I’ll just quickly explain the handles by saying that every store has these stick on handles that they can add to big packages because, of course, no one in Tokyo drives anywhere, so everything must be carefully carried home on the train and that, my friends, requires handles.) And so I ended up not wrapping the thing, but scrawling “Merry Christmas” in black magic marker on the side of the box.

I did leave the handles on it, though. I mean, someone has to get it home.

Ah, so. I just got home from dinner in Machida. Dinner was in a Brit pub called The Hub and was attended by 15 people, including one student--who I later found out was dating a teacher. The Japanese Brit pub served smoked salmon on salad, brie and fig appetizers, tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet), chicken wings (?), fish and chips, and ice cream in choux pastry. That--along with two hours of nomihodai (all you can drink)--was our Christmas dinner. I came home (drunk, via four trains) with a Secret Santa gift of Toy Story juice glasses.

And so this is Christmas.

In Japan.

I miss you all!