Christmas in Japan

In general, Christmas is no big deal here. Of course, they have tons of Christmas decorations and light ups everywhere. Sometimes even more than what we have back home, which is weird, because they don't actually celebrate it. Families with young children might buy some presents for the kids, but once they reach junior high school, it's over. Same applies to birthday in most families. Couples might go on a special Christmas date, and friends might organize Christmas parties, not to feel lonely if there's no boyfriend or girlfriend around. Twisted.

Also, we are supposed to save energy because of the March disaster, remember?? Well, with this much light up and wasting electricity, I wonder what their idea of saving energy is.  Just look up "Nabana no sato".Here's the link: http://www.esankei.com/ryokou/sp/nabana.html .  It's in Mie prefecture, not so far from here. It's a gorgeous and unbelievably huge light art creation, but c'mon, do we really need this, while some people in the North/East are still struggling to get back to their normal lives? They used 5800000　LED lights to do the Mount Fuji thing only....Not that I don't want to go and see it at least once in my life. However, this year, due to that disaster, we could be a bit more modest...shouldn't we?

Christmas decorations in Umeda, Osaka

I tried to make our Christmas as European as possible. My Mom had sent us chocolate ornaments and the famous Hungarian "szaloncukor", which in mirror translation would be "parlour candy", as in old times the Christmas tree used to be displayed in the parlour, so guests would be able to admire it when entering the house.They come in all kinds of flavours and beautiful, stylish wrapping. If you happen to travel to Hungary in winter, you definitely should try them. 

I spent about 2 hours on skype on Christmas Eve, talking to my parents, opening presents. In my family, we open the presents in the evening of the 24th. Some families do it on the 25th. So I neatly placed the presents we got from my parents under the tree. We did "kampai" (the Japanese equivalent of "cheers") with some "umeshu" plum liquor and ate a Christmas cake I did from ready made materials in about 15 minutes. I refuse to spend too much time in the kitchen during winter season, due to the extremely poor insulation of Japanese homes. It's freakin' cold!!
But yeah, it was  a nice Christmas, despite the fact that I was away from home. Never happened at Christmas before...LOL.. It was really busy, especially buying and sending tons of presents back home to friends and family.  But hey, I totally enjoyed it! :)

The cake, our tree, the candies, the presents and the plum drinks :)

I don't have any Japanese style New Year's decoration in my home, but I've seen a few really nice ones displayed in shop windows. Next year is going to be the year of the dragon, so obviously, most of the decorations include dragons! 

By the way, how do you like my new visitor counter little globe on the right? I found it on another blog, tracked it down, and installed on my page too. Pretty cool, huh? Now you'll be able to see, how many visitors I have, and from which part of the world!! I could check it in my stats since I started this blog, but the info wasn't visible on the blog.