The element of surprise is one of the aspects of life in Tokyo that I really enjoy. You’d think that after all the time I’ve spent in Japan, that I would no longer be surprised by some of the things I witness here. The way things have been adapted to fit in with Japanese culture can be sometimes baffling, and at other times just so clever.
The Japanese have always been people who observe and then copy or adapt and change products to fit their lifestyles – or to take international market share. We saw it with the car industry as well as in countless other businesses where, after the Japanese got into the game, their products became the only ones to buy. But this article isn’t about technology; it’s about chicken.
The other day I had a few friends over for an early-Christmas feast: we cooked a turkey, which in itself is quite unusual here, since a large bird would never fit into a normal Japanese home’s oven. Before buying our 3.6 kg (8 pound) frozen bird, we were careful to measure the dimensions of our oven, and then of the turkey we bought to make sure it fit.
Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas
Naturally the conversation turned to Christmas food and customs from around the world. I was told by one of my friends that he planned to take his girlfriend for a special dinner at a chicken restaurant. When I asked which one, he said, “KFC of course, that’s our custom. They have a special Christmas menu.”
Probing further into this phenomenon of having a special meal at a fast food restaurant, I was told that he had to make a reservation and that he and his girlfriend were allotted a thirty minute niche to enjoy their chicken meal. He was quite proud of the fact that he’d successfully secured the reservation, “It’s very popular, but I know the manager,” he said to me in a whisper so that our other guests wouldn’t hear his secret.
“And how do you spend the rest of the evening?” I asked him.Christmas is about chicken...and love. It turns out that as December 25th is not a holiday in Japan, Christmas Eve is the more important day.
“Well, our custom every Christmas, is to go to a love hotel,” he told me. “We will go early, since love hotels are very busy on Christmas Eve.
I should add here, that my friend who lives at home with his parents has been dating his girlfriend for three years. I’ll have to write more about ‘love hotels’ in another article, but for those readers who don’t know what they are – they’re small hotels that rent rooms to lovers on an hourly basis.
Chicken Instead of Turkey
Anyway, back to the chicken: After the KFC revelation, I started to become aware of Japan’s Christmas-chicken phenomenon. For the week preceding Christmas, it seemed that chickens were everywhere. My mailbox was stuffed with flyers for chicken deals at stores and restaurants – even our local pizza places were selling them. I don’t know how I never noticed it before, but then again I have often been out of the country at Christmas time.
I visited a few supermarkets in my area, just for a look, and sure enough; the prepared foods sections that had a few days before been full of sushi, yakitori and salads was now filled with trays and trays of chicken. They appeared in many different forms from whole roast chickens to party trays that gave an assortment of pieces prepared in different cooking methods.
I don’t know how this custom of eating chicken at Christmas started in Japan, but clearly, it’s been going on for a long time; like many others adopted from foreign cultures, it is now deeply ingrained in modern Japanese society.
Marco Lobo - All things Asian -- culture, society, history and business
Join the Conversation