Happy holidays to all of our readers!

There are a lot of cool things about living in Japan, and one is that because of where it’s located relative to the international date line, we get to be one of the first places in the world to celebrate Christmas!

We’re about to go check under the tree to see what Santa brought us, and after that we’ll be taking the rest of the day off to handle our full day’s schedule of very important responsibilities, starting with volunteering to help Mr. Sato eat all the snacks in his insanely huge Christmas stocking. After that we need to spend some time perfecting our Japanese granny mandarin orange peeling technique, and we really shouldn’t squander the opportunity to make one last trip to the Takadanobaba Mister Donut while it still has its Pokémon-themed interior.

Really, though, we already got the number-one thing on our wish list for this year back in October with the full reopening of Japan to international tourism. That means some of you are probably right in the middle of your first trip to Japan in quite a while, or maybe even ever, and we hope you’re finding it was more than worth the wait. But whether you’re a currently visiting traveler, local resident, or someone with an interest in Japan from afar, thank you all so very much for supporting our site, and we’d like to wish all of SoraNews24’s readers, and your friends and families too, a fun and joyful holiday season.

Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNew24)
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