First things first: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Christmas isn't celebrated in Japan because less than 1% of the population are Christians. As far as Santa and gift-giving are concerned, I was shocked to see that the normally overwhelming capitalist and consumerist attitudes here haven't strongly adopted the custom, either. Christmas isjust another holiday for boy/girlfriends to get one another a gift. On the Eve, I saw a few people in the streets wearing Santa hats and selling cakes (the convenience stores offer a cake catalogue, too). With the general stigma against obesity and people generally trying their hardest to look good at all times (over-dressing themselves regardless of where they go - McDonald's is a good example), nobody I saw was interested in cosplaying as the Fat Man himself.
The New Year, however, is the most important holiday there is; it has kindly provided me with about two weeks of vacation time. I currently sit in Kumamoto, Kyuushuu (near the middle of the southernmost of Japan's 4 main islands) after a good meal of butakimuchi (pig cooked with korean kimchi and onions) and raw horse. My travels will last until roughly Jan. 6th, when I am obligated to return to work. Unfortunately for me, this time of the year is the busiest for travel, since most of the entire country has a week off, and will most likely return to their hometowns and families to celebrate the New Year. Since all planes, shinkansen, ferries(!), etc. were already booked by the time I began thinking about it, I wound up on a night bus from Shinjuku in Tokyo to Fukuoka in Kyuushuu. To my pleasant surprise, the trip lasted a mere 12 hours instead of the 14 that was described on the webpage.
Fukuoka is probably cool but I don't really care to explore big cities so much when traveling far. I have one of the biggest in the world a 40 minute train ride away from my house, and I doubt there's much I'm missing. Cities like that are overwhelming at times - especially with my relaxed and roughly planned style of travel. As the bus was pulling into the station, I had just finished deciding what order I would visit the cities I had penned prior. Oh, speaking of which, here's the plan:
- Fukuoka - arrival
- Kumamoto - castle, gardens, the cave Musashi wrote Book of Five Rings and later died at
- Kagoshima - volcano, southernmost point in Japan I'll visit (though Okinawa would be nice)
- Beppu - hot springs, sex museum (as curiously mentioned on Wikitravel)
- Kita-Kyuushuu - New Year's celebrations, island where Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro dueled
- Nagasaki - WWII atomic bombing, museum, Dutch trade port/artificial island
- Fukuoka - head home in one way or another
