Christmas is not a public holiday in Japan. It is also, somehow, one of the best places in the world to be in December. The two things are not unrelated.
We'd been to Japan in autumn before — that was peak foliage season, the temples and the colour, the tourist crowds. Going in December was a different calculation. No foliage. Colder. Significantly fewer people. And in exchange: illuminations everywhere, Christmas markets in unexpected places, and a version of the festive season that Japan has made entirely its own.
Japan adopted the visual language of Christmas — lights, trees, Santa — without the religious or family obligation that comes with it at home. The result is Christmas as pure aesthetic. Nobody is stressed. Nobody is buying last-minute gifts in a panic. The lights are beautiful. The hot drinks are good. That's it.
The Nagoya Christmas Market
We hadn't planned around this but stumbled into the Nagoya Christmas Market in Sakae. It runs through December and is styled after the German Weihnachtsmarkt — wooden stalls, mulled wine, sausages, a proper globe-shaped centrepiece. In Nagoya. In the middle of Japan. It was completely surreal and very good.
The mulled wine was served properly hot and came in a ceramic mug you could either return or keep. We kept ours. The sausages were grilled on site, served in a bread roll, and were better than they had any right to be. The crowd was local, mostly — couples and small groups rather than tourists, which made the whole thing feel like being let in on something.
December in Tokyo
Tokyo in December has a specific quality in the evenings. The illuminations along the main shopping streets — Omotesando is the famous one, but there are dozens more — turn the whole city into something. The cold helps. The lights look better against a proper cold-sky dark. The crowds are thinner than in October. You can actually walk at a sensible pace.
Shopping in December Japan is also its own experience. The department stores go fully into the season — window displays, gift wrapping at every counter, staff in Santa hats being extremely polite about it. We bought a few things we didn't need and don't regret a single one.
One other thing: KFC at Christmas. Japan has a tradition, started by a 1970s marketing campaign, of eating KFC on Christmas Eve. It's so embedded in the culture now that people pre-order weeks in advance. We found one with a short queue, ate it on a bench outside, and it was completely delicious for reasons that had nothing to do with the chicken.
December is genuinely underrated for Japan. Fewer people, better light, Christmas markets, and the whole country wrapped in illuminations. We'd go again in a heartbeat.