The modern Japanese tradition of eating fried chicken on Christmas Eve began (so the story goes) when a visiting American came to a KFC and said, “I couldn’t find a turkey here in Japan, so I am having chicken instead for Christmas.” A couple years later, in 1974, KFC launched an ad campaign promoting “KFC for Christmas.” It was a big hit, and to this day many Japanese still follow this tradition and eat chicken from KFC on Christmas Eve.
For more about Japanese Christmas & Christmas Eve check out the article on Christmas.
A Christmas cake in the U.S. is a fruitcake, that is what I have learned. But in Japan Christmas cake is not that. It’s a cute decorated cake with a Christmas theme. Having a Christmas cake for Christmas is a very common tradition for a Japanese family and you can find one priced from 10 US Dollars and up, depending on the size, appearance, and the taste. The most expensive cake I found was over 500 US Dollars (57,750 yen).
The traditional Japanese tea house or chaya first appeared during the Muromachi period (14th~16th centuries) and was commonly used especially in the Edo period.
Chaya was commonly used as a rest-stop for travelers and as a place for public entertainment. Chaya occasionally appear in Ukiyo-e, or a Japanese genre art of the Edo period. Today in Japan, cafes are called kissaten (きっさてん) and can be found everywhere. On the other hand, chaya most likely only exist now as tourist attractions.
This photo shows the well-preserved Mizutani Chaya (水谷茶屋) located in the city of Nara, Japan.
Ukiyo-e is a genre of paintings and woodcut prints that started in the Edo period. Ukiyo literary means “a transitory world” (often translated as “the floating world”), that is the world of our everyday lives as opposed to the world after death. E means a picture, so ukiyo-e is a picture of people and scenes familiar from daily life. During the Edo period these were mainly pictures of Japan and Japanese people.
The photo is a ukiyo-e by Sharaku (東洲斎写楽) from 1794.
Fugu, or blowfish is considered as delicacy in Japan. In order to prepare the fish, a chef must acquire a special license because certain parts (heart, kidney, liver, eyes, etc.) of Fugu are lethally poisonous.
Sumo is a style of wrestling and is the national sport of Japan. A sumo match takes place on a platform called a dohyō, which is a 6.7 square meter platform with a 4.55 meter ring. Dohyō were first built in temples and believed to be where a god resided. During the match, both wrestlers must stay inside the ring and the first one to step out of the ring, or allow any part of his body to touch the ground except the soles of his feet, loses the match.
