Christmas is present in Japan too. The shops have Christmas decorations, and people hang all kind of flashy things to their windows. The city of Sendai decorates one park ‘theme of season’. To Japanese people the new year is the most prominent holiday of the year, and while Christmas is celebrated, it’s usually holiday for lovers, who go to restaurant for romantic dinner and end the night in a hotel. This custom is bit different from the Euro-American family Christmas. Here’s some video of the main festive park in the downtown Sendai.

Glittering lights were plentiful, and small vendors sold foods and drinks all over the world (well, from Turkey and Japan at least). Below image me attacking a skewer of beef.

The Pegeant of Starlight, annual Sendai custom to bring light into dark winter.

We had the bounenkai-party of my lab last week. We went to a fine restaurant and had a 10 course French dinner. Our laboratory head, Prof. Kawashima apparently paid this all from his own pockets. Below can be seen image of your humble correspondent and his benefactor.
The dinner itself was gorgeous, we had lobsters, giant crab claws, huge clams, good two kilo roast, and lots of salmon prepared different ways, baked goodies and fried beef-tongue. This was accompanied by cheese-tray and fruits tray with lovely slices of Italian ham, French style fish soup and carefully prepared stew. The image is slightly bad, but shows two of the food trays.