Yes, they have Christmas in Japan. Or, perhaps more accurately, I should say the Japanese are “aware” of Christmas, and “observe” it, in the sense that we “observe” Groundhog Day. There are Christmas decorations in all the malls, and Christmas songs on the radio. But the 25th itself is not a holiday, and to the extent the day is “celebrated” it is done ALL WRONG.

For starters, Japanese Commercialized Christmas is presented largely as a time for lovers, and a time for buying crazy nonsense. And perhaps buying crazy nonsense for your lover. I saw so much random crap, from meat to notebooks with “merry Christmas” price tags on them, I assume implying that such items were Christmasy in some way. But then again I guess that’s not too different from Christmas back home, which has also become largely about moving products. Based on the testimony of my students, most kids get at least A present on Christmas day, but the Japanese are giving each other presents all the time anyway, so that’s not much of an event.

The lover thing is more interesting. Christmas is often portrayed as a sort of romantic, emotional time, with all the candles and soft lighting and Dickensian splendor and so on. Among young people, scoring a hot Christmas eve date is quite the big deal.

But the weirdest thing of all is the Japanese conception of Christmas dinner. Apparently, some time ago KFC began marketing an outright lie that (Kentucky) fried chicken was the traditional American Christmas meal. And this caught on, being co-opted and appropriated by all manner of other restaurants and families, until it became a mainstream holiday convention. We had chicken, of course, the Japanese always say to me when I ask them how their Christmas dinners were, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I worked on both Christmas day and Christmas eve. Perhaps one of the most surreal moments of my trip so far was walking past the 7-11 on the evening of the 24th, only to be accosted by a bunch of employees dressed up as Rudolph and Ms. Claus. They had a little heat lamp stove thing set up outside the store, and were yelling at passers-by to stock up on 7-11 brand fried chicken (all corner stores in Japan have their own deep friers, you see) for their special Christmas meal that night. I wish I had gotten a photo, but I didn’t have my camera and assumed they’d be back on the night of the 25th. But no, apparently Christmas eve is meal night.

Eager to fit in regardless, I did go to KFC on Christmas night, where I ordered one of their many holiday specials. Then I went home and had cake.