Twice a week I get a dispatch from a company that imports japanese goods for the japanophile here in the states. I look forward to these e-mails and wanted to share some with you.

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Hello again from Japan, where the opposite of "red" is "white."

Christmas is approaching fast, and Japan is getting ready for the holiday in traditional Japanese style. Christmas is a nice, warm time in Japan, but to be honest, foreigners living here get frustrated with how superficial everything can seem. It's a time of plastic battery-operated Santas that are made in Japan, of gaudy decorations in stores, of Christmas-themed printing on onigiri wrappers at 7-11, and of Christmas parties. Foreigners living in Japan are apt to be asked to don "Santa wear" (a Santa Claus suit) and play Santa for Japanese kids -- I've done this a half-dozen times at least in the nine years I've been here. Christmas is never an easy time to be away from home, and gaijin living in Japan are apt to be extra sensitive and homesick around this time of the year.

Over the past 20 years, the idea of giving a Christmas present has taken hold (helped along by Toys R Us Japan), and so most Japanese kids can expect a special present from their parents, or maybe their grandparents, too. Presents are also exchanged by young people, and of course boyfriend and girlfriend. Older Japanese, for whom Christmas is an "outside" thing, don't usually give gifts. The other "big event" that is related to Christmas Eve is that it's the #1 night for girls to lose their virginity, and for weeks in advance love hotels are booked solid with couples waiting for this perfect night.

Much more important to the Japanese than Christmas is New Year's Day, which is a quiet, solemn event for most people -- first of all, you clean your house from top to bottom, so you can start the new year off right, and replace the toothbrushes with new ones. You decorate your house with kadomatsu (decorations made of bamboo and pine). At night on December 31st, you put your legs in the kotatsu and watch Kohaku ("Red-White"), a 3 hour TV special featuring everyone who's anyone in the Japanese music world, and eat toshi-koshi soba ("cross into the near year" noodles), which are supposed to make you live a long time. In the U.S., Christmas is a solemn event, and New Year's Eve is time for loud parties, but in Japan, that's reversed. I imagine that Japanese living in the U.S. are extra lonely around the new year because the customs are so different.

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