Merry Christmas!

You can probably guess, even if just by looking at the picture to the right, that Christmas is a little different in Japan than we know it here.

The broad strokes are still there - families and friends sometimes exchange gifts, and houses are decorated with Christmas lights.

But the types of gifts, when there are any, tend to be "cute" (or, as the Japanese would say, かわいい; kawaii), typically being things like teddy bears or scarves — things that we Westerners might give on Valentine's Day. Inexpensive gifts are also given around this time of year, more due to the upcoming new year than to Christmas, to less intimate friends. Here's an interesting excerpt on that subject:

More obligatory year-end presents are given during this season as well to people who have done you a favor during the year, however, in contrast to Christmas presents, they are given between companies, to bosses, to teachers, and family friends. These presents are known as 'Oseibo' and are generally things which are perishable or which wear out quickly for which the price can readily be checked because of the system of 'on' and 'giri' (loosely translated obligation and reciprocity). These presents are usually purchased at department stores so that the recipient can check the price and return something which relates to the scale of reciprocity.

Billy Hammond

More significant than the difference in gifts are the differences in actual tradition. The Japanese often celebrate Christmas with two signature foods. The first is a Christmas cake, a sponge cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries (click the picture for a recipe). By the way, I plan to make one of these myself for Christmas - I'll post the results, wish me luck!

The second, bizarrely, is Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC managed to hijack Christmas with a very successful ad campaign some decades ago, and now takes reservations for "Christmas Chicken" as early as October. Many Japanese believe that this is how Westerners celebrate the holiday as well.


Hmmm... this post is getting a bit too long for me to talk about New Year's in Japan, like I originally planned. I'll leave that to my next entry, and I'll close this one up with a Christmas song straight out of Japan. If you want to read more about Christmas in Japan, check out the links below the video.

Christmas in Japan:
Wikipedia
TanuTech
Santas.net

PS: My savings have passed 25%!

First image retrieved from Unusual Life.
Second image retrieved from Japan Guide.

Japanese at a Glance

Fortunately, I don't have to start completely from scratch to learn Japanese. I had studied it a little in years past, and have picked it up again not long ago.

On the other hand, though, I still have a long uphill climb ahead of me. While I may have memorized the mess of symbols (called kana) that you see to the right, I still have to learn kanji, which are not only much more complicated, but also much more numerous. It is recommended to learn at least 1,945 kanji in particular, but there are far more than these alone!

And, of course, learning the symbols does not constitute learning Japanese. While I might have a basic understanding of some of the simplest concepts in the language, there is still a lot left to learn. Even if I drill every vocabulary item into my head, speaking Japanese isn't as simple as thinking an English thought and replacing each word with its Japanese equivalent. I don't think it would be expedient to explain this sentiment in detail just yet, but it is actually best to avoid English thought altogether when learning a foreign language.

The grammar is naturally much different from English. A few of the most conspicuous differences are that most words don't have a plural form, and that "am", "is", and "are" are all translated as the same word. Add to this, there is no real future tense (or, as Tae Kim would have it, there is no real present tense), but rather a non-past tense that covers both the present and the future.


Well, I think that has been enough ado over nothing. Let's close up this entry with a great J-Pop song which was shown me by Gon-san at Lang-8. Following is どんなときも (donna toki mo) by Noriyuki Makihara. Now, I have studying to do (ーー;)

First image retrieved from Musings of a Creative Slacker.
Second image retrieved from Joe Park's JLPT Page.