Thursday, December 18, 2008

Christmastime in Sapporo

Christmastime in Sapporo is proving to be all of the commercial goodness of home, with a few twists and turns.  The big to-do right now is the White Illumination, a colorful display of lights and tourists, in Odori park.  I used this little event to finally take a trip up Sapporo's famous Eiffel-tower-wannabe, the t.v. tower and waited for the magic lighting!

In the meantime, I was able to get a decent semi-panorama of downtown...this is stitched together with five shots:


And the nighttime illumination begins:










Sapporo's sister German city is Munich, and we not only share her love of beer, but her German Christmas market tradition as well:



Drinking some hot mulled wine and gnawing on some Rudolph-approved deer burgers!!  Yummers!





And since we won't actually be here for Christmas (Thailand, yay!), I wanted to share some Japanese Christmas observations from around town.  First up, some bizarre ad campaigns, where Xmas has proven itself as both a noun AND an adjective:



Let's decorating (!!) the tanuki (scary, rabid raccoon) with promiscuous lights:


This card does its best to scare children into being good for the arrival of both Santa and a chick named Eve:


When you think of a plethora of mini-Santas, do you also think Geisha strolling in Kyoto?


Of course you don't!!!  Everyone knows they're busy cleaning up Buddha at this time of year instead!!


Happy last-weekend-O'-holiday-shopping everyone!

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