“When do you start listening to Christmas music?” The answer to that question is a critical juncture in the United States marketing sphere, and a long-debated point in time among the general population. The two major players in that debate can usually be chalked up to the ‘right after Halloween’ camp, and the ‘after Thanksgiving why would you start on November 1st that’s WAY too early’ crowd. I am sure some fall somewhere in between those two parameters, slowly easing into the Christmas spirit; but Japan, I recently found out, is firmly part of the ‘right after Halloween and not a day later’ camp.
It makes sense when you think outside of the American point of view and realize that Thanksgiving in the United States is very much a unique holiday. In other countries, there is zero buffer for the start of Christmas festivities, which often means as soon as November hits, anything is fair game. To be fair, most companies in the United States have also continued on that track (I vividly remember my dad’s look of reproach as he stared up at the Christmas trees in Costco when they started putting them out before Halloween even hit), but the existence of Thanksgiving tends to slow the transition. I did not truly realize how popular the holiday season was in Japan until I walked into my closest Starbucks (it’s exactly 35 minutes away) during the first week of November.
Wham!. Literally. The tune of Last Christmas drifted through the entirely decked out establishment, red and green, seasonal flavors on full display. For a moment, it genuinely felt like I’d walked into a Hallmark Christmas special. One of the most popular seasonal flavors is Chestnut. (even though Americans have whole Christmas song dedicated to it, on this side of the world, Chestnut is infinitely more popular). I’ve gotten various shocked reactions after explaining that most people in the United States don’t actually roast chestnuts over an open fire during the holiday season.
Since coming to Japan, Starbucks of all places has risen to the top of my list of places-I-like-to-go-at-least-weekly, and I don’t know if it’s more from the seasonal flavor schedule in which they split all four seasons into two parts and create a specific flavor for both, or if it comes from the setup which is exactly the same as the United States. Anyways, I ended up getting a very unseasonal drink, a caramel macchiato, and went on my way. Something about the holiday cup almost made me forget that the high was still hitting the lower 70s.
Convenience stores are certainly not ones to be left behind, however, and on the same day I walked into Starbucks I also noticed that my local Lawson’s had already started advertising Christmas Cake reservations. Christmas dinner in Japan can usually be characterized by two main points; the first one being a Christmas Cake. I can’t speak to the majority of American households, but even though I didn’t grow up with this tradition, the concept is familiar. In Japan, Christmas Cake seems to be so popular that you can literally reserve it two months in advance. The second characteristic of a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner is a little more out there. The concept is probably completely foreign to American readers, yet at the same time, very American. It can be summed up by three letters. KFC.
Yes, it does mean what you think it means. In fact, if you think about it, doesn’t Colonel Sanders look just a little bit like Santa Claus? I recommend looking up a Japanese Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial in your free time. Or maybe I’ll link one here. There’s something truly beautiful about the popularity of KFC in Japan, and I honestly have no idea how they managed to convince an entire country that everyone eats fried chicken on Christmas. Either way, today, the fried chicken tradition has transcended just KFC, and has now become a staple Christmas food item that has penetrated even to the far reaches of the Japanese countryside. Here’s a picture of my local Lawson’s from just a few days ago advertising their ‘golden chicken’ for Christmas, the tag line in green on the bottom reads ‘Merry Delicious’. At times like these I am reminded how much I love this country.
Either way, Starbucks and Lawson’s aren’t supposed to be the center of this post. I’ll definitely end up rating them some other time. Today, the star of the show is Osaka Station, specifically during the Christmas season. Some friends and I had traveled to Osaka from Kobe, where we had a fun (insanely boring) work conference to attend the week before American Thanksgiving. Eager to make our way ‘back into civilization’ (the city) (this kind of trip is a necessity at least once a month), we decided to make the most of our weekend and hit Osaka the day after our conference.
Walking out of the train into Osaka Station (NOT to be confused with shin-Osaka Station), my poor inaka (rural Japan)-accustomed senses were immediately overloaded. In Japan, when you’re in places like these, it’s almost impossible to imagine that this country is going through a birth-rate crisis. There are bodies everywhere, it is utterly and completely packed. I’ve often wondered why, as the busyness of American cities simply can not and does not compare to the jam-packed, crowded atmosphere of their Japanese counterparts. Honestly, it probably has more to do with the fact that although Japan has ⅓ of the population of the United States, its entire land area can be fit into the state of California. The U.S. is simply more spread out, and even its cities reflect that.
Anyways, we had just gotten off the train and were ready to make the most of our day before returning home. My friend mentioned something along the lines of the Osaka Station area being one of the largest conglomerates of buildings in the world, and it’s easy to understand why. It is connected to six satellite stations by way of underground passageways and over-road walkways. Every time you leave one zone, you’re met with another mall, one of the other train stations, a subway entrance, another restaurant floor, or a walkway to another building with more malls and ways to get to yet another entrance or exit. It took me months to grasp the layout of Kyoto Station, which is coincidentally one of the longest single buildings in the world; Osaka station and the outlying buildings would actually take me years. You can’t tell me a single person that uses it, even every day, actually knows the full extent of that place. It is no doubt the origin of many a trauma for the directionally challenged (aka myself).
To make this easier, I will just refer to the entire area as the Osaka-Umeda complex, as technically it’s part of a larger area called Umeda, but we mostly stayed inside and between the train station buildings themselves. This was not my first rodeo in the Osaka-Umeda complex. In fact, I was there a bit over a month ago, and it literally took myself and a friend twenty minutes to find a restaurant that she had been to at least two or three times previously.
If I was ever left in this train station area alone, you’d likely find me roaming the basement floor in twenty years, feeding off the leftovers in 7-11 trash cans at night. Luckily, it wasn’t just me, so I didn’t have to go it myself and get lost fifteen times. In a group of four, we were only slightly confused on a couple of occasions, and made it through many a passageway, succeeded in acquiring a coin locker for our luggage, and even made it to one of the outlying malls for a collaboration event two of us wanted to go to. Christmas decor was everywhere.
I was hit with the full brunt of the holiday spirit walking through that station, and I finally felt the annual call of Christmas music, waiting to be listened to, from the dusty corners of my digital music playlist collection.
The ceilings in parts of the interconnected stations are very tall, which is an architectural choice not often employed in Japan outside of urban areas. There’s something about cities, a characteristic of some type, that strengthens as it gets colder. What I’m trying to say is that cities themselves somehow become more city-like in the fall, and especially in the winter. Walking around the inside and outside of the station reminded me of New York, with both Japanese and English Christmas songs drifting out of several stores and cafes we passed.
There’s also this giant shopping area called the Hankyu department store between the Umeda Station section of the complex and Hankyu-Umeda station. A mouthful, and you’re just as likely to stumble upon it accidentally as purposely find it. If you go inside the store it feels quite literally like every single person visiting Osaka on that day is buying souvenirs there. All of us, feeling slightly overstimulated, easily decided not to battle our way through the crowds just to enter. Next to the shopping area was pretty nice to walk through, though. A snow/snowflake motif extended through the ceiling hangings, and I took at least fifty pictures and videos walking under them. I don’t know how videos are supported on this website building platform yet, so you won’t be getting one. Here’s some pics though.
Oh yeah, that reminds me. I was looking back through my first post and realized I never did update it with my feelings surrounding web design. Kind of just left the brackets in there with nothing in between them. Oops. Well, if you must know…
I absolutely hated it with every fiber of my being. In fact, the current version of this site’s homepage is barely 75% finished. There’s a bunch of stock text and images littering the other pages I haven’t gotten to yet, and I was brought to tears more than a couple of times trying to create and then fix everything. Basically, I’m going to ask my brother to help me fix everything when I return to the United States in a little less than three weeks. Or my cousin. They don’t know that yet. Don’t tell them.
After this post goes up I’m once again going to dive into the terrible and confusing waters of website creation. Let it be known, though, that I’m using a platform that pretty much holds your hand every step of the way. I’ve realized I need to be literally carried through the process. Oh well. Everything will come together in time. That’s my mantra.
After spending most of the afternoon in Osaka-Umeda stations and the surrounding maze of interconnected buildings, we eventually recollected our luggage (finding an open coin locker almost felt like a Christmas miracle), and took a train back home.
Although people still get festive in the Japanese countryside (or as we often refer to it, the inaka), it isn’t to the same degree as major cities. Sitting on the train headed home, scrolling through the pictures I took, I could almost hear Micheal Buble and Frank Sinatra’s renditions of classic Christmas songs echoing in the far reaches of my brain.
I was always a post-Thanksgiving kind of person. In the U.S., whenever I saw Target or Walmart pulling out their Christmas decorations in early November, I’m sure my face mimicked the look I often saw my dad giving the Costco trees when I was younger. Consumerism and Christmas often go hand in hand in America, and that truth of the holiday season is even more prevalent in Japan.
Looking out the window of the JR train leaving Osaka Station, the cityscape slowly turned back into typical countryside houses and mountainous terrain. I glanced back down at my phone, aimlessly shuffling through all of my music, my earbuds echoing out the first ten or so seconds of a song before I’d hit the next button.
I then came to a rather uncharacteristic decision.
Subtly, as if to trick my own mind, and to soothe the state of cognitive dissonance that had been brewing in the back of my brain all day, I navigated to a playlist I hadn’t touched since last year. I hit the play button.
(I then found myself listening to the opening notes of Last Christmas in the middle of November)
Marie’s Official Travel Experience Rating of the Osaka-Umeda Complex (or Osaka Station’s MOTER):
General Vibes (very subjective): Good. Also Overstimulation Station. Not giving it a super low score because I literally crave the crowds sometimes LOL. 5/10
Historical/Cultural Relevance: Historical relevance? No. Cultural relevance? Surface level if you personally consider something like getting physically squished into your morning commute by train pushers part of Japanese culture. 3/10
Relevance to FUN (also very subjective) (was it fun?): Yes. Like I mentioned in general vibes, this is heavily biased because being in a square kilometer area that contains as many people asmy entire town is almost a novelty at this point. Holiday decor adds to this. And for all the confusion of the station itself, there’s a lot to do and so many good restaurants in the area. 8/10
Good for Travelers (on the go)?: Good enough. If you’re not getting off at Shin-Osaka station on a visit to the city, you’re probably getting off at Osaka Station or one of its satellite stations. Lots of shopping and food, but it’s not exactly known for much on the cultural activity side. If you’re lugging around more than a carry-on I’m sorry for your loss; good luck finding an open coin locker. 7/10
Good for Vacationers (just wanna relax)?: No. 1/10
Re-visitability: By definition you’ll revisit this station if you come to Osaka more than once. On the other hand, I’ve been twice and had a completely different experience each time. 7/10
Accessibility: It’s a train station. By definition it’s accessible. Also part of the bullet train route. Maybe I need to rethink my rating categories. 10/10
Would I take my friends there?: Yes. It would be funny seeing them struggle if they had more than a carry-on. 7/10
Would I take my family there?: No. It would be anxiety inducing. Leading everyone through Kyoto Station several times was enough for me. It could be unavoidable, though. 3/10
Final notes (wild card points): Points because I love trains so much and the vibe of the JR line section of the station felt like an airport. Also some extra because it needs to be more than a few points higher than my Himeji rating. 7/10
Final Rating out of 100: 58/100 (take that as you will)
Japanese Word/Phrase of the Week:
田舎 (ee-nah-kah)
Meaning: Rural Japan. The sticks. The countryside. I use this word several times a day. If I tell someone living in a city where I work, they often respond with something like “Wow. That’s soooo far.” with an unspoken undertone of ‘why would you live all the way out there’. But, just as there are upsides and downsides to living in the countryside, there are upsides and downsides to living in the city.