Have a Kamikaze Christmas…
Twas the Night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even….Sweet Jesus a Fucking NINJA!!!!
Japan goes really well with a variety of things:
- Raw food– they love that stuff.
- Sexy old school robes– Kimonos are hot.
- Robots– this is documented in the literature.
- Booze– This country runs on alcohol consumption
- Order and rules– the Japanese have a major rule fetish
- School girls– ’nuff said
- General random, bizarre shit– See here
All the above have clear medical and scientific links, proven with science, to the Land of the Rising sun. So, what is it that Japan does not mesh with quite so well?
Christmas
Let’s be clear, the Japanese are not apathetic to the whole Christmas thing. They just…well….fuck it up. It’s clear that the energy is present, I mean just look at this….
The truth is, like so many other things, the Japanese just took something that looked shiny, pretty fun and consumeristic and ran with it but, in that awkward evil, pigeon-toed bo-legged way that only the Japanese can do.
Lets face it, Japan doesn’t have the Judeo-Christian “tradition” (read: oppression) that so many western countries have. They just thought all the lights, singing and “what not” looked like fun so they got on board. And that’s cool, no problem, but what with the super-charged Samurai spin they put on things, Christmas here feels a bit like watching my stupid cousin, naked except for some Christmas tree socks , trying to shit into a condom…on Christmas.
Christmas lights
Christmas Lights or “Kurisumasu iruminaeshun” are absolutely fucking everywhere. You cannot escape it. It’s like a viral zombie outbreak only, its lights that span the entire visual spectrum, twisted and molded into the most disturbing and inappropriate depictions of irrelevant shit you can imagine.
“The Ghosts of Japanese-Christmas-Fail”
Last year whilst hammered I wandered through an illumination display next to a well-known department store in Shinjuku Tokyo and spent more time than I should have trying to figure out why the hell there was a spectacular light display depicting an Orange Santa Claus brandishing a whip, prodding a green dragon to leap through a purple ring of fire. The answer was given to me in fantastic rainbow fashion as I stumbled away at the end of the path “Magical Christmas Illumination Circus” .
Drool poured from my drunken mouth as I contemplated these images and my place on this whacky chess board of life.
Christmas Chicken
Turkey is like the bastard son of dead birds to eat in Japan. Seriously, the Turkey gets about no play what so ever. But, the Japanese have seen all the photos of happy westerners chowin’ down on some good bird corpse on Christmas and they want a piece of that action.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is like a Crack dealer on the 1st of the month when December 25th rolls around. Colonel Sanders owns any family with a child in Japan.
If you don’t know yet, take notes, KFC is big time in Japan. Wendy, the red-headed little harlot and her fat old man recently get booted the hell off the island here, and although McDonald’s is making a play for some of that sweet,sweet Christmas chicken cheddar, they can just keep dreaming.
Sanders or “Colonel Old-man” over here (serious “Colonel Oji-san”), is like the fucking Godfather of Christmas yum-yum’s .
Christmas day
Family. Fellowship. Tradition. Faith.
All of these things are often associated with Christmas in the West. Well, this isn’t the west, and my neighbor owns a katana and that shit you wear to climb walls with your toes.
Over here in Japan, Christmas day is for two things: work and romance.
Yes, as inexplicable as it might sound, most people do not have a holiday on Christmas in a country where they write comic books about Jesus. It’s just a normal day…..until….the night comes. When it does become night, Tokyo or Osaka or wherever you might find yourself after escaping from the ninja clan that abducted you, is probably someplace more akin to a very odd Valentines day than any Christmas you have ever experienced.
Christmas in Japan is for couples.
Every woman in Japan that isn’t too old, bitter or a combination of the two wants to go on a date on Christmas. God help the play boys. Christmas becomes an intricate juggling act that all too often results in miserable failure and an intensive, extreme lack of yule tide cheer. With out getting too specific lets just say “I have a friend” who spent one Christmas drunk as an “Irish American on a Tuesday afternoon”, eating chips and dip watching “Team America” over and over at some girls house I…oops “he” had never met, aside from chats on messenger, and then vomited profusely in her bathroom before passing out due to the consumption of about 60 German beers she had-why I know not-horded in her guest bedrooms fridge. This “friend” may or may not have had anal sex with this girl, he just can’t remember. Merry Christmas circa 2006.
General Holiday Cheer
Or the lack there of.
It’s just different. I know, in the states and in Europe some people are not into Christmas, but at the very least, everyone is psyched to have a day off. Also, although I haven’t tested this and published my findings in a prestigious medical journal yet, I am rather certain that any child you find, from any place in the world will just naturally be pumped to the max about Christmas. You can take Osama Bin Laden’s kids, drop them off at a Toy’s R’ Us on December 24th and tell them that night they can have whatever they want delivered to them by this fat jerk in a red coat and then you can sit down, enjoy a stiff and liberating screwdriver, and watch his little tikes go fucking ape shit jihad on their first Christmas letter to Santa.
To illustrate the lack luster sort of attitude here I am combating, allow me to recount some Christmas cards that a few of my students made this week.
Making Christmas cards is a great activity to do around the holiday season with elementary school students. The dynamic changed a bit this week as I did this same activity with 17 year olds.
Yui’s Christmas card reads…
Dear Yuko,
You are my best friend. Merry Christmas.
Have a nice day.
Yui.
Emiko’s Christmas card read’s…
Dear Imamura,
Merry Christmas.
Lets fight hard for basket club this year!
Never quit!
Love you forever kiss kiss Emiko
Juri’s Christmas Card read’s
Dear Mr. Eric
I want a money.
Please give to me the money.
I love you. Juri. (heart mark;ad nauseam)
Jaded, un-named student (male)
Dear Mr. Santa-san
Fuck Christmas. I am a Japanese.
From XXXXXX
So anyway, like I was sayin’…Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even……
Gaijinass 
Is it wrong of me to want to give that last kid a high-five?
Hell no.
Haha…fucking hilarious.
Haha, nice. I think I’ll try and find some chick who hoards beer this year. That could work our quite well…
Actually, I prefer Christmas in Japan because it doesn’t have the ridiculous, historically-inaccurate-grafted-on appendage of Jesus, who was actually born (if he existed at all) in late September or early October. Tokyo is usually more tastefully decorated than most American cities.
Sorry. I suppose one must define “tasteful”.
I consider myself in reality, an atheist, however I think of Christianity as my “culture”. A concept I stole from Japan. Although I do not believe, I embrace. I embrace what is today conventional Christian “Christmas”
In that respect, the Japanese are butchering this event. Brutal. Silly. Murder.
I know America has done it’s own job prison raping many a Japanese word/occasion/ceremony etc. I simply want to be on the record as saying… “this is fucked.”
Hence the post.
There is a way to do things and there is a way not to. Sorry Japan. You have fumbled the Christmas ball marvelously.