Merry Christmas!

Nozomi & I wish you all a wonderful Christmas season filled with peace, blessings and God's love.
Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cake

Many people in Japan are surprised to hear that Americans don't traditionally eat strawberry cake for Christmas. Yes, Americans, you read that correctly. The Japanese custom of eating strawberry cake with whipped cream frosting is assumed by most people here to have come from America.

Here is a typical conversation:
ME: Americans don't usually eat strawberry cake at Christmas time.
JAPANESE NATIONAL: Really?!  What kind of cake do you eat?
ME: Fruitcake. It has dried fruit and nuts inside.
JN:  That doesn't sound like Christmas style... Why do you eat that?
ME:  Uhm.... I don't know. Why do you eat strawberry cake?
JN:  It's red and white! Like Christmas and winter!
ME:  But strawberries are a summer fruit.
JN:  Uhm...

Look carefully at the second picture (the back cover of the catalog) and you can see a selection of Christmas cakes you can order for ... dogs and cats!
Japan: strawberry cake. America: fruitcake. Australians? New Zealanders? Canadians? Britons? What cake do you eat for Christmas?

Concerts

If you need more information about concerts that are coming soon, here are the posters...

Lunar Eclipse

The eclipse tonight is amazing-right now the moon is a strange, reddish-orange color. From here in Japan, we can see the entire eclipse, which is quite amazing, but from other parts of the world, the moon is just rising (or maybe setting) as the eclipse starts (or maybe ends) so it will appear to be much larger in the sky, which sounds amazing too!
Usually my cell phone camera takes pretty good pictures, but, as you can see, pictures of the moon just don't work without a more powerful lens. I borrowed a picture from a live camera broadcasting the eclipse from Singapore-much more impressive!