Ah yes, this is Year 2 for us in Tokyo for the Christmas season. This year we are celebrating the season on our own with our family sprinkled around the world... not in Tokyo. Though Tokyo is not from a particularly Christian tradition, the Christmas season is milked for all of its' commercial and sentimental opportunities.
We have really enjoyed being washed over with the mega-city approach to Christmas as well as creating meaningful celebrations of our own.
Our very special uni-lingual (Japanese) Honan Jazz choir had a concert in our tiny hall with about 20 guests crammed into to enjoy the show. The program consisted of great Jazz classics such as Ray Charles "I love her so", songs from rent and Sister Act, some Gershwin and Christmas carols generally sung in Japanese with a smattering of English... which sung by our choir sounded a bit more like Japanese than English! :)
The men were all dudded out with Dan's Christmas ties (Ando-san was singing Mona Lisa so needed that tie) :
The women dressed in Christmas colours:
With memories of our time in China Shelley and I were asked to solo acapella (Silent Night). We brought in our friend from Palau to support us.
The evening was a fabulous cross-cultural sharing evening full of Christmas cheer and nostalgia for us; friendship, laughter and music for our Japanese friends. The star of the evening is always our wonderful conductor who is an inspired jazz pianist trained in New York (who has a smattering of English enough to help us when we get stuck!) She is expecting soon so we will have no choir for awhile much to our sadness:
We finished off the evening at our local wondering pub which is called "the Log Cabin", a tiny pub tucked into a huge, faceless apartment building. You walk in the door and there is the complete feeling of being in a log cabin in Jasper, complete with log walls and over 20 ticking and chiming clocks. The owners have run this establishment for the last 30 years and we often drop by there after our choir. Here is the gang wishing you a Merry Christmas.
Signs of Christmas in Tokyo do abound... though no snow here. The Jizo statues have their red-knit sacred hats on:
Our school has a Christmas tree in the front hall:
What has been really fun for us again this year is to discover the glitzy, often tacky (for our tastes), over-the-top "Christmas Illuminations" tucked in corners all over Tokyo...
We did sing "I am dreaming of a white Christmas":
Layers and layers of lights:
Christmas trees of all kinds of shapes and sizes in many locations....
Incredibly manicured parks with lights draped all over every surface...
Streets lined with trees having nearly every branch wrapped in lights. We watched them wrapping the trees; what a lot of patience it took. Think of the hours! And yes, those are throngs viewing the illuminations.
One of the prized vistas is this one down this beautiful street with a view of Tokyo Tower lit up like a Christmas tree.
And then of course the over the top illuminations done by Toshiba every year and viewed by thousands of Tokyoites over the season:
One of the things we love about our travels around Japan is that, in the midst of all of this glitz and commercialism we stumble on reminders of the Greater Truth. Here Shelley is admiring a 500 year old... yes that is a 500 year old bonsai tree. Every day it has to be trimmed and watered; every day for 500 years! How many generations is that???? Do we have something to learn about caring from this?
We come home to our apartment in one of the quieter neighbourhoods and really refocus on what is important to us. We value each other as a team here in Japan. We received this gift from a Japanese friend for Christmas; 2 strawberries worth about $6 each. The white symbolise a long marriage; the red one symbolises fresh passion. We thought this was quite appropriate.
We gaze at our paper cut out in our window that blocks the view of the high-rises out our window that we made to help us think of the Kootenays:
We enjoy our "Christmas tree set-up" that we did NOT go into the forest and cut down like we do in Kaslo. (If you look carefully you will see 4 trees including a tiny glass-blown one) :)
We think about the gifts we have been given in our lives at this time of so much anger, hate, violence and intolerance.
We value our family sprinkled around the world. Here a gathering of our two daughters and their cousins with Oma to celebrate an early Christmas with her in Kaslo.
They cooked a fabulous meal of course with turkey (we have not found turkey here yet):
We think of those family and friends who have departed before us. This has been a year in which we have lost several close friends whom we miss. This tree was planted at Shelley's father's death and is lit up every year as an honouring of our elders who have passed away.
And we think of all of the rest of you, our family and friends, as you gather to celebrate your time together and what you value most. We wish all of you the best of the season and we wish that you spread some kindness around you in whatever part of the world you happen.
"All of the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of a single candle."
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all from Dan and Shelley in Tokyo, Japan, 2016
