Shoppers at Singapore’s One Raffles Place can get into the holiday spirit with the help of Doraemon. Or rather, dozens upon dozens of Doraemon, which have been turned into a cute and wonderful Doraemon Christmas tree, complete with Santa hats.
Christmas (Page 11)
Now that Halloween is over, and without Thanksgiving being celebrated in Japan, shops here are already getting ready to bring in the Christmas season in earnest. Yes, that means the lights, the ornaments, winter landscape displays … the works.
And of course, there are the holiday sweets to look forward to. In that department, you can certainly have your pick of expertly created luxury cakes from celebrity pastry chefs, but for more casual occasions, Mister Donut Japan is offering a selection of beautiful Christmas cupcakes and doughnuts that promise to be just as delightful. Let’s see their newest line of treats that look festive enough to be displayed under a Christmas tree!
Japan has really started embracing Halloween over the past few years, but that doesn’t mean the country has adopted every Western holiday. For example, no one really has American-style Thanksgiving celebrations here, which means there’s no reason to wait until December to get into the Christmas mood.
So as soon as Halloween is over, you can start expecting the signs of Christmas, and along with Christmas lights and Christmas trees, this year you can look forward to some sweet and adorable Christmas donuts from Krispy Kreme.
Christmas cakes (yes, it’s already time to start thinking about the holidays) come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s not surprising at all to see our favorite feline character and international celebrity Hello Kitty turn herself into one. But this “Hello Kitty Face Cake” requires just a little bit more artistic creativity from you than the average cake. You see, the cake doesn’t come looking like the picture above — you actually have to make it into its Hello Kitty form!
Baskin Robbins Japan is known for their quirky ice cream creations centered around major foreign holidays, and this year they’ve rolled out a half dozen smiley face frozen treats for Christmas. Featuring familiar characters and adorable animals, these special sundaes in festive cups will get anyone into the holiday spirit. Let’s take a closer look at this cute Christmas lineup:
It seems only a short while ago that we were battling the unrelenting summer heat here in Tokyo, but now that autumn is on its way, apparently it’s already time to start hearing news about Christmas — heavens, it’s hard to keep up with the passing of the seasons!
Well, for those of you who like to start thinking early about the Holiday Season, one of the reporters from our sister site Pouch has a very special Christmas cake to introduce to you. It’s an absolutely gorgeous creation by gourmet ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs — which is more than enough to catch our attention and make our mouths water. And even though they’ll only be available in one shop in France, the cakes look so exquisite that we just had to share the pictures with you!
Tis the season for fried chicken, at least it is according to Japanese Christmas traditions. And if you find yourself with leftovers from your delicious dinner from KFC tomorrow, we have an incredibly easy and tasty recipe to keep that holiday spirit going as long as you have leftover fried chicken in your fridge and your trusty rice cooker. We’ve tried some dubious rice cooker recipes in the past, but this one looks like one of our tastiest yet, so click below to see the recipe for KFC rice!
When discussing Christmas in Japan it would be remiss not to mention the traditional cake that families and individuals buy during this time of the year. RocketNews24 also purchased a cute Santa cake to please our collective sweet teeth and warm our bellies in the cold winter.
However, it wouldn’t be a RocketNews24 Christmas with cooking that bad boy up in a rice cooker. Heck, if Big Macs or Oreos work, then rice-cooker-cooked Christmas cake should be a grand slam. Unsurprisingly (for us at least) the results were both festively pretty and delicious!
With Santa filling his sack and preparing for the annual world tour, pâtisseries and chocolate stores around Japan are marking the occasion with all sorts of cute and delicious dedications to the jolly, red-suited fellow. Now you can join in the fun no matter where you are, with these adorable Christmas treats to make at home. You won’t believe how quick and simple these sweets are!
Remember all of those umbrellas that were abandoned in train stations in October and November this year during the typhoon season? Well at least one station in Tokyo definitely does, but thankfully they’re putting a few of them to good use: by turning them into surprisingly pretty Christmas trees!
Lonely this Christmas? Shiga Prefecture’s Pieri Moriyama shopping mall most certainly is.
Although technically still operating, the once thriving shopping centre is now home to just 14 stores after the local economy took a nosedive and businesses started pulling out in their droves. In the spirit of Christmas, however, the mall’s operators evidently decided to pop a tree up for visitors to enjoy. But as this Twitter user’s photo shows, when surrounded by naught but vast expanses of nice shiny floor, this tiny tree is possibly the loneliest Christmas ornament we’ve ever seen.
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On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a Pikachu in a Christmas tree. At the Pokémon Center in Tokyo!
This amazing tree was recently spotted on Japanese site Pokésoku, with the question: “I thought I’d buy my nephew a Pokemon for Christmas, but can a six-year-old child handle it?”
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It’s December again in Japan, and that means that Christmas trees are sprouting up outside store fronts while festive advertisements of cakes adorn the trains and convenience stores across the land. The usual mercilessly repetitive jingles that fill department stores and supermarkets are replaced with mercilessly repetitive carols for this one special month.
However, not everyone can share in the festive joy of a Japanese Christmas filled with hallowed traditions such as fried chicken and bowling. Christmas in Japan is also a day for lovers, and as of 2011 it was estimated that over 60% of young men and women would be single for the holidays and that number certainly hasn’t appeared to have changed recently.
All this lonesomeness and misery brought about annually begs the question: “Who the hell made Christmas a romantic holiday in Japan anyway?!” RocketNews24 Japan investigated.
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Like many people who grew up in the US, I used to think of food cooked at a convenience store as the absolute last resort for sustenance. Things are different in Japan though, where the hygienic, attentively-staffed convenience stores are more akin to compact local grocers. Aside from a variety of boxed lunches, you can even get tasty hot food, such as fried chicken.
Fried chicken, it just so happens, is the traditional choice in Japan for Christmas Eve dinner, so with the holiday fast approaching we decided to stage a little taste test to see which convenience store’s fried chicken is the best.
The Japanese have a strange love for sinking their teeth into their favorite characters. We’ve seen Rilakkuma cakes and Hello Kitty doughnuts, next in line appears to be good-old Snoopy and his little yellow friend, Woodstock.
Mister Donut (or Misdo for short), the confectionary maker who brought us the jack-o’-lantern Hello Kitty doughnuts for Halloween, is already in the midst of preparing for the Christmas season, and boy does it look tasty!
After years of living in Japan, I’ve noticed that the island nation has quite a few merry misconceptions about what it means to have a Western Christmas celebration. Replacing Santa’s cookies with a strawberry-topped Christmas cake is just one of their many mix-ups, though at least they have the gift-giving part right.
Now, you might be wondering why it is that we’re posting about Christmas when it’s barely even October! As it turns out, Japanese parents hoping to surprise their kids with a sweet treat from Bandai have to start planning for the holidays NOW. The Premium Bandai online store has just opened up reservations for their 2013 line of character-themed Christmas cakes called Chara Deco Christmas. These cakes come with toys and other neat treats suited to young fans of everything from Kamen Rider to Pokemon.
Located in a remote section of a remote prefecture of Japan, Kumamoto’s Amakusa City faces the same problem a lot of rural towns do: its population is dwindling as children born there generally have to leave to pursue an education or career, and few move back.
As part of an effort to boost the remaining residents’ spirits, as well as hopefully garner a little tourism publicity, Amakusa recently held a World Santa Congress.
Our reporter was walking through downtown Tokyo on Christmas Eve (alone, of course) when suddenly from behind a large posse of Santas on motorcycles came riding up from behind, filling the streets with the sound of roaring engines and holiday cheer.
So this is Christmas. The time where we all sip eggnog by the open fire enjoying the gentle blanket of wet snow covering a meadow as a deer scampers by, right?
Of course not, it’s raining here now and my glasses are broken. Still, I’d consider this an average holiday season for myself. For many out there, Santa has little more than a big bag of suck to stuff in your stocking.
Don’t sweat it though. Every year can’t be a winner. For those having a blue Christmas, the website MyNavi has compiled a list of Japanese men’s worst Chirstmas experiences.
Peek through the pages of either of these two wonderful “360° Books” from any angle and you get treated to an intricate view of a fantasy world like you’ve never seen. All you have to do is keep opening the pages until you’ve created a circle and the scene inside has taken shape. Read More
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