Christmas in Japan

Commercial Christmas is very much celebrated in Japan. Decorated trees, hilarious costumes and Xmas sales are everywhere. Christmas Eve is considered a date night and fried chicken is the must have meal—some of the KFCs take reservations!

We spent Christmas in Hakuba, a mountain ski town, and were sad to find no KFCs nearby. Luckily fried chicken was on the (breakfast!) menu at a cafe just a few minutes walk from our hotel.

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is opening my stocking on Christmas morning, so I got everyone fun socks (from Gap and Urban Outfitters) and filled them with little things like candy, chapstick, gum, etc. I found a Kate Spade bracelet that might as well have been made for my mom, brought marshmallows for my brother (he's a man of simple means and my family loves marshmallows...we grew up with a marshmallow drawer in our kitchen), and got a voucher for Tim to print one of his favorite trip photos on canvas (GroupOn and LivingSocial regularly have deals for canvas prints!). I got myself a Madewell bracelet :) I saw it and fell in love, a 30 percent off sale sealed the deal.

The Do-It-Yourself Magic Growing Tree was a hit! It was a very different, still very lovely, Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas from Hakuba!