I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas, as we just had ours in Japan.
We celebrated last Christmas dinner with two Japanese traditions, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Christmas cake.
You may ask yourself why KFC? Well I heard recently that after WWII American soldiers couldn't get turkey in Japan, so they opted for chicken and the tradition grew from there. It seems like a legitimate explanation and I'm sticking with it.
Now the Christmas cake story I still have yet to track down, but it's a massive industry. Cakes can be ordered from convenience stores like 711 & Family Mart to cake shops like my wife's favorite Chateraise https://www.chateraise.co.jp/campaign/xmas/02
For shops like Chateraise you have to order weeks in advance. This year something crazy happened, the order we placed one month ago didn't come in because of a logistics problem, so the shop offered us any cake we wanted that they had in stock. My wife picked this large, Santa themed cake which was $20 more expensive than the one we ordered.
It was absolutely delicious. Everything was semi-sweet, not overloaded with sugar. The Santa was a meringue, the bushes were a matcha whipped cream, the house a very light gingerbread and all of it sitting on top of a fruit sponge cake. It was delicious and fun too eat as we tried the different parts of the cake.
New Year's Eve will be here soon and then another year of hard work and hopefully more success to everyone. I'll close with Mt. Fuji at sunset from yesterday.
Thanks for reading!
