Why I Love Christmas in Japan

 Nozomi is still napping and there is a little lull before our festive holiday activities continue.  I image there was a moment similar for the Holy Family.  Jesus sleeping peacefully at his mother's breast.  Joseph exhausted napping in the hay.  Mary just sitting back reflecting lovingly at her family, amazed by all things, never expecting that a bunch of shepherds are on their way to greet her son and things are about to get crazy.

This will be our fourth Christmas in Japan.  For a country that lacks Christianity, they sure love to celebrate Christmas.  I don't think most Japanese know why they are celebrating, but there is something marvelous in the way they've embraced our western Christmas traditions and put their own spin on it. How many other places how you seen a Christmas card with Santa and Baby Jesus?  Jesus has a way of sneaking into Christmas.  O' Little Town of Bethlehem plays in a department store. Stars top Christmas trees.  He's there if you are willing to look.

I love about Christmas aboard.  It's easier to focus on why we are celebrating.  It's been four years since I've been bombarded by Holiday commercials. We never have to make decisions about whose family to visit on Christmas.  And we can always blame the postal service when presents don't arrive on time. We can celebrate Christmas in our own way.

I'm so excited for this upcoming week.  Tomorrow we have the congregational worship and Christmas party.  Japanese parties tend to feel boring, but I love the Christmas party because everyone is in a festive mood.  I also get to dress Nozomi up in a pretty Christmas dress and show her off.  One of my first memories of coming to Japan was attending the Christmas party, so it holds a fond place in my heart.

And I'm excited for Christmas Eve.  I talked several friends into wearing Kimono, traditional Japanese dress reserved for holidays and special events.  It's not common to wear it Christmas.  In fact, I've never seen anyone wear Kimono to our church.  But I really wanted to, so now a group of us is getting all dressed up.

My favorite thing Christmas Eve is walking home from church.  All the convenience stores have made their employees dress as Santa and sell Christmas cakes on the street.  We greet each one with a cheerful Merry Christmas.  Our little family makes our way home to our quiet apartment, exhausted and happy.

Trick or Treat Tokyo

Nozomi rocking her Tiger Costume.

I'm still giddy with excitement from the fabulous night we had.  Tonight was Nozomi's first time trick or treating.

Halloween in Japan continues to grow in popularity each year.  In every train car this Halloween night you could see young men and women dressed up in costume. People love to dress up here and they love holidays. The Hyaku Yen (Dollar Store) has a bigger Halloween display each year and our okashi shop (candy/snack store) had big bags of candy for sale.  Many people make a special trip to Tokyo Disney for Disney Halloween and Halloween parties and parades are can be found in many different regions.

Trick or treating is spreading to more neighborhoods.  We chose to go to the Hiroo neighborhood. There are many foreigners that live there in very nice houses and apartments.  It was also well organized with a circulated list of participants.  Each house put out a pumpkin to show that you could trick or treat there, but most people just stood outside their gate or in the entryway and handed out candy.  Apartments pooled their candy together and there were huge bins of candy!

There were so many kids! They were dressed as Anna, Elsa, Batman, witches, pumpkins, and princess and on and on.  It would had been impossible to ring doorbells.  I couldn't believe how many people came out.  Most of the adults were in costume, too.  I thought it would just be foreigners, but there were many Japanese kids and their parents.  I heard French, Australian, Japanese, American accents and more!!

Oh, and Nozomi totally rocked her first real Halloween.  She fussed a little bit in her costume and was timid at the first house, but once she realized she was surrounded by other kids and got candy, she put her game face on.  She patiently waited outside each house, carefully selected her candy, said "thank you" and bowed.  I've never seen her take something so serious or behave so well.  I was so proud and overjoyed.  Tonight I feel truly blessed to live in a safe city, to have a supporting community, and to have such a wonderful little family.

Kids lining up outside a complex waiting for candy.
We had perfect weather.

Nozomi patiently waits for her turn to pick out a candy.
She takes Trick or Treating very serious.

Trick or Treating on the streets of Tokyo.

Nozomi's goodies.  The perfect amount for a slow toddler.
Other kids had much more, and we ate some on the train.

(Christmas in Japan) On the 9th Day of Christmas...

Merry Christmas from Tokyo Lutheran Church

Happy 9th Day of Christmas!  Even though the Christmas lights and trees have been replaced with  sheep (2015 is the year of the sheep) it's still Christmas at church.

We had a beautiful Christmas Eve service.  Our new English Choir stood outside the church and sang hymns before the service.  It was fun to see people pause as they walked by and look at us.  Some even stopped to read the sign!  Our small choir even sang during the service.  We wore lights around our necks so we could see our music. Some visitors joined our choir since we were singing traditional hymns.

This year we had a record number of visitors to our service.  Somehow the word got out.  We had 88 people commune and probably another 10 or so that received blessings.  It was a amazing.  Two years ago we only had about 30 people, a rusty praise band, and someone's hair caught on fire.  We are growing.

Christmas Day is not a holiday in Japan.  Many of our regulars at church also go to their home country to be with loved ones.  We have started a new tradition for the evening of Christmas Day: the Roth Christmas Party.

Making Hot German Wine Drink

Since many people can't be with family and friends or their family and friends aren't Christian, we have them over to our apartment for appetizers and drinks.  Everyone brings something and it's a lot of fun.  This year we had an American-Japanese-Chinese-German party.  The highlight was definitely some hot German wine (Gluehwein?).
For New Year's Eve we celebrated by having the J3 Missionaries over for dinner.  Some of them went to join the millions of Japanese people at the temples to welcome in the New Year.  We stayed home and played games.  We also watched TV.  At midnight the temples and shrines open and everyone goes in to pray so that they have good luck this year.  On TV they showed many of the beautiful temples in Japan.  We were all commenting "I want to go there!" after each one.

It's very different than New Year's in the US.  It's a very quiet serious event...not an excuse to get drunk.  I found it very interesting that in a country of atheists the biggest event of the year is going to the temple to pray for good luck.  I couldn't imagine spending New Year's in the US watching the media show different churches.  Most people go to the temple out of tradition, but I also think it really shows that people here are looking for something more...and in a culture of rules and tradition will they find what they are looking for in a religion with a God that breaks all boundaries and frees us from ourselves?

Merry Christmas from the Roths!!