4 Ways to Have Yourself a Merry Christmas 2023 in Japan

Travelers from countries that traditionally celebrate Christmas may be in for a bit of culture shock when visiting Japan for the Yuletide season. After all, Christmas in Japan is, for the most part, regarded as a wintertime holiday imported from the West.

This means that for most, Christmas is celebrated in a secular way. It’s considered a romantic holiday for couples or a fun time for kids, with very little in between.

And with Christmas having made its way to Japan without any religious context attached, Japan has even managed to come up with its own unique customs, such as eating fried chicken — with KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), and strawberry shortcake for the occasion.

In the spirit of doing as the locals do, celebrating Christmas the Japanese way is all well and good. But if you’d like to do more than enjoy chicken and cake, here are some ways to add some Christmas cheer to your December stay in Japan!

Add some whimsy to your Christmas by celebrating at a theme park! This is what many young Japanese couples do for a Christmas date, but who says you need to have a significant other to enjoy some holiday fun?

All over Japan, many theme parks, large and small become a winter wonderland during the Christmas season, adorning every corner with colorful decor and festive lights, staging seasonal activities and performances, offering special themed menus and merchandise, featuring mascots decked out in Christmas regalia, and covering the area in sparkling illuminations at night.

The ever-famous Tokyo Disney Resort and Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan are the go-to destinations for theme park enthusiasts, with the former’s Tokyo Disney Sea being a popular Christmas date spot, and the latter’s photogenic crystal Christmas tree setting two Guinness World Records.

Still, homegrown theme parks prove that they can hold their own, too. For one, Huis Ten Bosch’s Christmas Town is nothing to sneeze at, as this Europe-inspired theme park in Nagasaki that resembles a Dutch village transforms into a dream-like city of lights as early as November.

Craving for a Christmas feast of the highest order? Not to worry: whether it’s a Christmas course meal, buffet, or afternoon tea, Japan’s finest hotels have you covered.

You can’t go wrong with an indulgent dinner — with fantastic views of the Tokyo skyline to match — at the Park Hyatt Tokyo’s New York Grill. With its sumptuous, well-curated courses, ANA InterContinental Tokyo is another highly recommended choice in Tokyo.

While the spotlight tends to fall more on Tokyo’s hotel restaurants, elsewhere across Japan, you can also count on familiar and established hoteliers to offer special Christmas menus: Hyatt Regency Kyoto, Osaka Marriott Miyako Hotel, and more.

If you want to celebrate a little earlier in the day, some hotel restaurants also serve Christmas lunch or brunch. And if dainty holiday-themed nibbles are more of your thing, you’ll find a few festive afternoon tea courses, too.

A word of advice, though: hotel restaurants tend to fill up quickly on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we highly recommend making a booking as soon as possible.

Japan sure knows how to light up its long winter nights, as illuminations have become a contemporary winter tradition in this country. It can sometimes feel as if the illuminations are getting more and more elaborate each year!

While these illuminations tend to run all winter — typically beginning in November and lasting until January or February — and aren’t necessarily Christmas-themed, some locations do have Christmas as their theme or inspiration for their lighting, and/or they put on special illuminations for Christmas then change themes after December 25th.

Some examples of spectacular illuminations include the previously mentioned Huis Ten Bosch; another is Tokyo German Village (or Doitsu Mura), which is actually in Chiba, is known as one of the three major illuminations in the Kanto region.

There are so many elaborate winter illuminations across Japan that the list is practically endless — Tokyo alone already has plenty of options for people to check out, including the illuminations all over the Marunouchi area near Tokyo Station, the Keyakizaka-dori illuminations at Roppongi, and Shibuya’s Blue Cave.

But since it would take forever to list and visit all of these gorgeous light displays, we’ll save you time by sticking to some of our top recommendations. First off, Nabana no Sato, a flower park in Mie Prefecture, boasts one of Japan’s largest and longest winter illuminations: fields of sparkling colorful lights stretching out as far as the eye can see, and even a tunnel of lights.

Also not to be missed are the ornate lights of Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi Prefecture, Toki no Sumika in Shizuoka Prefecture and one of Kanto region’s largest illumination: Sagamiko Illumillion at Kanagawa Prefecture’s vast Sagamiko Resort Pleasure Forest.