December 25, Thursday, and everyone is at work. Christmas is not an indigenous part of the Japanese culture--not even in the way pagan rites such as the decorated evergreen tree predate the religious holiday in western cultures.
But...
We in Japan know how to cherry pick the good ideas from other cultures and adapt them to Japan. That is how we got the Christmas Cake.
Every father worth his salt brings home a specially-decorated cake on Christmas Eve.
The most basic type is a yellow sponge cake disc frosted with whipped cream and studded with fresh strawberries. You can get chocolate confections with reindeer prancing through dollops of creamy snow. You can get ice cream wrapped in merengue. You can get Yule logs that look so tree-ish you have to smell the bark to be sure it's chocolate. This year ours came from a French patisserie in Tokyo and was made of creamy pudding between layers of crisp pastry, surrounded in a deep layer of toasted almonds. Of course you can make your own, like my last year's coconut cake.
However...
When cakes are being sold everywhere...
And look so luscious...
And the economy badly needs our support...
Merry Christmas!
Okinawa Looks Like This
Peaceful: a beautiful place for a walk
自己紹介
- Chura
- Born and raised in the USA (NJ), I’ve spent most of my adult life in Japan. One of my favorite places in Japan is Okinawa. To me, Okinawa is a land of stories and an island of music, magic and mystery. The music is shima-uta, songs sung to the rhythm of a three-stringed lute called a sanshin. The magic is in the colors of land, sea and sky. The mystery? Mystery begins where the line between legend and verifiable human memories begins to blur. I am a member of the Archaeological Institute of America, chapter chief of a sanshin study society, and a founding member of the Marine Culture Research Association of Okinawa.