When in Rome.. For the Japanese, Christmas is a completely secular holiday. They basically made Christmas what they thought Americans did for Christmas. One major American corporation that was able to take advantage of this was Kentucky Fried Chicken, who somehow gaslit the entire nation of Japan into thinking that all Americans ate fried chicken for Christmas. Now, it is a completely Japanese tradition to get Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets for Christmas. The crazy thing is, Japanese people still think Americans do this and are shocked when they find out that we don’t actually eat fried chicken for Christmas. Another Japanese holiday tradition is to have a white cake with strawberries. Interestingly, Christmas is not a family holiday in Japan, but rather a romantic couples holiday. This is probably because so many Christmas songs are about romance? Either way, they completely got Christmas wrong, but it’s hilarious, and we decided to celebrate it their way a little bit too. We invited our friends, the Passey’s, over for fried chicken and white Christmas cake.

Leanne had 4 days off between shifts, so we decided to make the most of it and go down to Sendai, the closest big city to us at about a 4 hr drive.

Every year during Christmas time, the city lights up all the trees on one of their main roads. This event is known as the Sendai Illumination.

Enough about trees with lights! A trip in Japan wouldn’t be complete without a lot of delicious Regional foods! Sendai is known for their beef tongue, edamame “zunda” shakes, and fresh oysters.

Though Sendai is not known for this, Japan is one of the few places on Earth where you can eat puffer fish. If you eat the wrong part, or it is incorrectly prepared, there is toxin in the puffer fish that can be actually deadly. We happened upon a Japanese restaurant where they served puffer fish as well as turtle soup, so we ordered both.

While we were eating, the Japanese older woman who ran the restaurant was happy to take and hold for us, show him the fish in the tanks, and give him love and attention.

One of the most scenic sites in Japan is Matsushima, a collection of about 260 islands off of Matsushima Bay. We drove up to the bay and took a sightseeing cruise all around the islands.

On the way back home, we got Costco memberships and shopped til we dropped. Costco has a lot of the same stuff ($5 rotisserie chicken anyone?), but also a lot of cool Japanese items including my favorite drink “Chill Out”. No need to keep going to konbinis to get that now! With the car full of essentials, but mostly non-essential Costco impulse buys (like a Ripstik!), we headed home back to the snowy North, Misawa.

We are so fortunate to have such a nice community to celebrate Thanksgiving with here in Japan.

It’s so hard to believe it’s already been 4 years! This is our first anniversary with a kid! Leanne prepared a wonderful steak dinner 😋

We live in Misawa near the Misawa Aviation Museum, which houses Miss Veedol. Miss Veedol was the first plane to ever fly across the entire Pacific Ocean non-stop. The plane took off from Misawa, Japan and landed in East Wenatchee, Washington in 1931! We went to the museum and had a great time!