I'll be back before you can say blueberry pie.

The holiday season is here in Japan. I heard my first Christmas song when I was at Starbucks in Sendai the other day. Christmas in Japan is little bit different than in America. I had to explain to my students that it wasn't the birthday of Santa Claus. Despite this small lack of knowledge, the celebration of Christmas is surprisingly similar in Japan. Except they treat it more like a birthday and they always buy a decorative Christmas cake. It's also not nearly as big a deal over here as it is in America. The kids did know a lot of Christmas songs, like Rudolph and Jingle Bells, but they were singing them in Japanese.


I asked one of the teachers at my school how she celebrated Christmas and she said that she does buy presents for her family, but she doesn't know if this is typical practice for Japanese families. From what I gather, they mostly just do the Christmas cake. I made my elementary school students write a list of things that they want in a letter to Santa and they had no clue what that was all about. I tried to explain that kids in America would have no problem listing three things that they wanted, but the Japanese students didn't really understand this concept. They call Santa Claus "Santa-san" and they call Jesus "Christo".


It won't be much longer until I am headed home for Christmas and I am really excited to see everyone. I am afraid I will suffer reverse culture shock by driving on the right side of the road in a car that is normal size and eating food that is average portioned, along with having access to cheese.

There was a hot air balloon festival near where I work recently and I drove down to check that out on the weekend. I was really hoping to get a free ride in one of them, but they weren't giving out rides for the public. It was really neat seeing the hot air balloons blown up and lifting off from the ground, though!


This last picture was on Monday morning when I was driving to work. It was the last day of the festival and there were balloons everywhere! It was kind of surreal.