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After having introduced the festival of Christmas to the Shiraishi family, we opened our presents. My favourite is a chunky and beautiful Doraemon alarm clock. That day I cooked a roast dinner for them for the first time. This included my pride and joy of roast potatoes.

It was strange to see Christmas in Japan. I get angry at the people who leave to go back home. I feel it`s like the people who go to university in the week and then go home at the weekend to have their clothes washed by their parents. I feel they`re missing the point of it all.

It was a normal day with people shopping, playing and working.. The only clue to the event was the radio playing festive songs on the radio whilst we were in the car. We bought the ingredients but couldn`t find any stuffing, Christmas puddings or Christmas cakes. There were plenty of Christmas cakes labelled as Christmas cakes but these were different and bizarre although admittedly tasty looking offerings. I wanted a simple fruit cake layered with marzipan and icing. This was impossible. There were cakes with sliced oranges or strawberries or chocolate on them packaged as Christmas cakes. These imposters weren`t good enough.

Today we went to Kobe to see one of Reiko`s father`s family. We went to a Chinese restaurant where we ate my new weirdest meal so far of crab and shark fin soup. It was incredibly thick and delicious. The shark`s fin is mainly gelatine and was really nice. Not as nice as whale (I know, I`m a bad person) but far better than crab`s brain. I can once again recommend this meal. After that we went to Kobe city centre to see the “Illuminarium” Although this brings to mind an aquarium for lights, it is a street in Kobe with lights arranged to look like giant stained glass windows down the street. It was admittedly quite awe inspiring.

There were literally tens of thousands of people from all over Japan who came to see it as it was the last day. Traffic was halted and we were herded like sheep into fencing routing on the actual streets. It took us about 45 minutes to walk about three quarters of a mile through the fencing there were so many peeople. I have some more pictures on my digital camera which aren`t so grainy as this mobile one but you can get an idea of what it was like.

And that is Christmas in Japan. The New Year is far more important to Japanese people and I`ll be wiriting about that as soon as I know what happens. Merry Christmas.