Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from J-List. We hope you are having a warm and special day surrounded by loved ones.Christmas is, of course, the most important cultural and/or religious holiday to many throughout the world, especially in the West. In Japan it occupies a slightly lower peg on the cultural awareness scale, a fact I was reminded of when my Japanese wife asked me, “What day is Christmas this year?” as if it moved around from year to year like American Thanksgiving. One challenge to enjoying a nice, quiet Christmas in Japan is being so busy, since December is a very busy time. In addition to the seemingly endless stream of 忘年会 bounen-kai or year-end parties you have with co-workers and friends, you have to find time to do 大掃除 oh-souji, the “big cleaning” that must be done before December 31st, so that you can enter the new year with a clean slate. (Companies do this cleaning, too — J-List does ours tomorrow.) One of the biggest bits of culture shock foreigners will experience when coming to Japan for the first time is that Christmas isn’t a holiday here, and I remember getting stuck in a traffic jam while commuting home from work my first Japanese Christmas back in 1991. It was really odd.
Christmas in Japan can be a busy time.
