How to greet people: Merii Kurisumasu! (say it fast)
What's the same? Christmas lights and decorations.
The Japanese love to decorate for Christmas, and they started the day after Halloween. Every store has been festooned with trees and wreaths and lights and signs wishing you a Merry Christmas in English or Japanese.
Sendai also has a festival called the Pageant of Starlight, in which the trees along one street are decorated with over 600,000 Christmas lights. Along the street throughout the month of December, they have a Santa Parade (like a regular parade, except that all the cheerleaders/baton twirlers/musicians are wearing Santa costumes) and a skating rink.
What's different? Everything else.
I did mini-polls of my junior high students. About half of them were planning to celebrate the holiday, usually through the reception one present from either Santa Claus or their parents. All of them were utterly shocked to hear that not only do children in North America get more than one present, but that we give presents to our parents and siblings as well.
School was open on Christmas Day; there were no classes, but the teachers were working and many of the sports teams had practices. Overall, it was very anticlimactic.
Obviously, Christianity is a minority religion here and so the outright commercialism isn't tempered by reminders of "the reason for the season." I didn't miss the right-wing Christian nonsense, but I did find myself missing the sense of hope and peace that everyone embraces at Christmas in America. Christmas lights are beautiful, but less so if you aren't able to forget that they were put there by someone trying to sell you a cell phone.
On the other hand, they played "Silent Night" at the Santa Parade, and everyone knew all the words. Japan is not a country that believes in choosing and sticking to only one religion.
New Year's
How to greet people: Shinnen akemashita omedeto gozaimasu! (said the 1st time you see someone in the new year; there is a different greeting for the last time you see someone in the old year)
What's the same? New Year's Eve, if you go to a bar
I went out for New Year's Eve with several of the other ALTs, to a bar that has seen enough foreigners that they knew to ask if I was vegetarian and wanted the bacon removed from my Fried Potato (yes please!). At 11.30, they fed us the traditional New Year's meal of extra-long soba (buckwheat noodles) that are supposed to promote longevity.
At 11.45, they told us that there was a countdown on Jozenji-dori (where the Pageant of Starlight has been) and that the entire staff was going to watch. They asked us to come along, and said that if we came back after they'd give us a free drink. (They then didn't ask us to pay before leaving -- trusting folk.)
We arrived at Jozenji-dori at 11.52 and spent 7 minutes discussing what we thought would happen at midnight. Our question was answered at 11.59 when all the Christmas lights on the trees went off. (I should mention at this point that during the run of the festival, they turn the lights off and on once an hour; it's very popular.) Someone decided that this meant there were ten seconds left, and started a countdown. ...san... ni... ichi... zero... Nothing happened. So they started again, and this time they got to about six when the lights all came back on. Lots of cheering, lots of shouting in Japanese and English, lots of car horns honking.
Then everyone went back to their respective bars, probably to claim their free drinks.
What's different? Everything, if you don't go to a bar.
New Year's is a religious holiday for most Japanese people. We went past a shrine on the way home that was, even at 3 am, all lit up and full of people. In fact, most of the bar district was unusually quiet, because most people were with their families doing... Shinto stuff. There are a number of rituals associated with New Year's, from ringing the bells 1001 times to promote long life to hanging decorations made of straw for a certain amount of time and them taking them to the shrines and burning them.
The pop culture of Japan (J-Pop, Disney, anime, karaoke) is so overwhelming that it can be easy to feel that they have completely lost touch with the deeper roots of Asian culture that equally fascinate Westerners (Shinto/Buddhism, calligraphy, tea ceremonies, flower arranging). But really, all those interests are just below the surface. At New Year's, everyone is at the shrines. When the cherry blossoms start to fall, everyone sits under them and contemplates the ephemerality of life (okay, mostly they drink, but still -- how many Americans sit and watch flowers fall off trees?).
They also adapt ancient traditions to new methods and technologies. One of the most important aspects of the holiday is the sending of New Year's cards to family and friends, and there is a whole set of rules that govern exactly how to do so properly and auspiciously. The cards are sold everywhere from high-class department stores and stationery shops to dollar stores and conbinis (convenience stores, except better). They are designed like postcards. The front is usually red or pink and features the Japanese take of the Chinese zodiac animal. This year is the Year of the Ox, and the cards have very cute cartoon cows all over them. There is also space on the front to write your New Year's wishes to the recipient. On the back, you write both the recipient's address and your own.
And that's when things get fun. It is inauspicious for cards to be delivered either before or after the period of January 1-7, and so the post office is specially set up to correctly handle New Year's cards. There are special stamps that indicate that the card is a New Year's card -- some cards are pre-printed with them, or you can buy your own or use the ones at the post office. There are also special slots in all the mail boxes for "New Year's Cards Only." The post office then ensures that the cards are delivered within the right time period.
(I know most of this because some of my students sent me cards. One of them wrote in very easy Japanese, encouraging me to study Japanese very hard in 2009, and she will study English very hard.)
So yeah. That's how Japan spends December. I was much less homesick than I was expecting to be, mostly because everything was so different that I wasn't reminded of what I was missing.
(If you're having trouble understanding the lyrics, check this out.)
