Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Japanese Christmas

Roast beef and salad.
In Japan, people do not really celebrate Christmas. The celebration that Japanese people do are mainly: 1) stand in line at Kentucky Fried Chicken and buy fried chicken (everyone knows that in the West, people eat turkey for Christmas (not in Sweden, though...) and KFC is close enough, and it is American, so it must be Christmas food); and 2) buy strawberry sponge cakes (because that is also Western, and very Christmasy (in Sweden we do not eat that for Christmas either...)).

Home baked bread!
Christmas is also a night were you have to go on a romantic dinner date if you have a girlfriend, so there are lots of couples out that night. Luckily  (?) I do not have anyone who would date me, so I spent both Christmas Eve (when Japanese people date) and the 25th in our magic bar, working. In fact, I worked every night from Thursday to Sunday, since Friday (23rd) was a holiday (the emperor's birthday) and we were open on Sunday because it was Christmas.

Christmas cake
On the 24th, I was invited to a friend's house and four of us spent a few hours there eating Christmas party food. It included a cake with strawberries, of course, and also had roast beef, avocado salad, octopus carpaccio, various stick vegetables, and home baked bread. Everything was very good (it always is when my friend is cooking). Especially the bread!

My friend is great at cooking, but less great at cooking proper amounts of food. There is always way way way too much. But delicious, so everyone ends up eating too much. Everything was of course home made. My friend even has a proper oven, so she roasted the roast beef herself, and baked the sponge for the cake etc.

2 comments:

  1. I've just learned of the craze for KFC at Christmas in Japan here (http://www.mangauk.com/?p=meri-kurisumasu) and can't believe it!

    The roast beef and salad looks delicious.

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  2. It is nuts, yes :-)

    Here in central Sapporo where I live there were almost no lines, but outside of the city center there are even KFC places that only accept pre-orders during Christmas because they have too much to do serving only that... And other places have lines several hundred meters long, I am told.

    The roast beef and salad was indeed delicious. As was everything else.

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