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Blogs > charaku > My Blog

charaku 76M
10 posts
12/5/2009 11:51 pm
It’s beginning to look a bit like Christmas
It’s beginning to look a bit like Christmas

We don’t have municipal garbage bins issued to each household here in Sapporo, Japan. Instead neighborhoods are broken down to small community groups of, say 20, homes with a designated garbage pickup point wherein each family takes turns for being in charge of assembling and dismantling the infrastructure for a week at a time. The “infrastructure” means a small portable wall of boards or plastic, a net to cover and weights (in our case house bricks), to keep the nets down. The nets are essential to discourage a voracious colony of crows that are prevalent throughout Japan. Assembly needs to be undertaken by 6am; Japanese are early risers and the crows beat them to it.

So what’s this got to do with Christmas? This week I’m on garbage duty, last night there was a heavy snowfall and I was up at 5:45am to perform my garbage duty. We had dedicated last weekend to putting up our Christmas decorations part of which are the colored lights on the Christmas tree (front room window), Santa climbing up a rope (upstairs balcony front window) and reindeer and lights (outdoor patio and garden tree). At 5:45am here its pitch black so the effect of all the lights flashing and reflecting on the snow was just magical.

Pre Christmas here is very similar to the west, a festivity the Japanese have readily adopted and adapted since WW11. Department stores resound to the usual seasonal ‘muzak’ and tinsel and gift wrapping is everywhere. Here Christmas really is for the ; you don’t see turkeys, hams-on-the-bone or Christmas puddings and cakes in the stores. Japan’s traditional Christmas meal is KFC and generally Japanese don’t like fruitcake, instead they opt for a light sponge cake decorated with cream and strawberries. But Christmas day is a working day here, wait until New Year then the feasting begins and how!
charaku 76M

12/24/2009 9:10 pm

 Thanks Sirmounts for your comments and greetings. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous 2010 too.




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