I am neither a fan of Santa Claus nor Jesus Christ. As far as I can remember, I have never celebrated Christmas once. Christmas, to me has no religious significance. In fact, I think that 25 December was so much fun back in the days of Roman Saturnalia where Christmas originated from - naked caroling, intoxication and fornication. Too bad they had to prepackage it into Christmas.
However, one thing I like about Christmas in Japan is, despite being over-commercialized, it is nothing more than a secular festivity. It is perhaps the biggest day for couples, the year-end Valentine's Day, perhaps?
The photo above was taken on Christmas eve, in Shiodome, a newly-developed modern city in Tokyo. This year's attraction at Caretta Shiodome was a wishing bell. Couples would queue up and wait till it was their turn to make a wish, ring the bell and get their photo taken by a staff.
This photo, in meanwhile was taken on Christmas night, in Akasaka Sacas, right next to Biz tower. The name is actually a wordplay. Read it backwards and you get "saca, saka, saka", the Japanese word for "hill". As you can probably tell from the photo, it's another classy area. It's part of Ginza, after all.
Illumination here was fantastic too. And they had a skating rink right in front of Blitz theater. Needless to say, the place was teeming with couples. For some reason, everyone looked stunningly attractive. It could have been the magic of Christmas, or it could have been the saturated levels of pheromones in the air, I'm not sure.
But curious, isn't it? When you light up your room in a summer night, you get cicadas knocking at your window. When you light up a Christmas tree in winter, you get couples flocking to it. Some people squash the cicadas when they see one. Some people get sour when they see couples holding hands or kissing in public. I found it heart-warming though, no kidding.
3 persons flung their shoes:
Looks like Christianity is the biggest religion in Japan. Malaysia too. You don't see people decorating the streets during awal muharram
nono, christmas over here is not much different from valentine's day.
diwali is supposed to be the festive of lights but i bet u see more lights on christmas. awal muharram has nothing to do with lights, man.
You haven't see muslim kids crowding santa to get their gifts yet ;)
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