Santa Likes Seiza

Ho ho ho! Japanese people tend to pray to their ancient harvest deities throughout spring and fall as well as New Year's, but there is no real doubt to the chief of Christmas: a pudgy white elf who loves to spoil children. Perhaps Mr. Claus is so popular because he fits all their best stereotypes of foreigners and gives generously while asking nothing.

Possessing one precious commodity (snowy skin) and one nice bonus (adequate conversational Japanese) as I do, it was no big stretch to say yes to an offer I recently got to play the jolly boss from the North Pole for a childcare center. The staff there had a fun idea: have Santa enter with an English "Merry Christmas!" and have the kids practice a few lines of English, then ask the fat man if he can speak Japanese and carry on from there in the language most familiar to the kiddos.

So we did just that. The bag has wrapped presents of candy for each boy and girl; the only two catches were that I offered a male present to someone of the female sex with a particularly short haircut and that there were too many gifts for the boys, leaving the staff to fix the imbalance as I left.






One fun little thing was practicing culturally proper sitting posture (see "Content..." from August, 5th paragraph) while in costume. They also offered green tea, as is customary when serving any visitor to an institution, and I plan on recommending that my toy workshop be retrofitted with tatami flooring once the blue-collar elves get their act together after New Year's.


This is my last post for 2007, a.k.a. Heisei year 19--the Japanese system assigns dates by emperor's rule. Please have a good holiday season and I look forward to seeing you, the Lord willing, at some point in the coming year.