the world outside / outside the world My life outside America: teaching, learning, living, loving.

We walked to a lovely overhang that spelled out Merry Christmas in German (Weihnachtsgrüße?), followed by a cute little carousel with prettily decorated horses, like the kind you might remember from your childhood. Passing that were shops selling chocolates, popcorn, mulled wine and beer, sausages, ham and sauerkraut soup and spiced potatoes, baumkuchen, gingerbread decorations, crunchy sweet nuts of all kind, assorted boxes and Christmas lamps, mini figurines and matryoshka dolls, wreaths and tree ornaments, among other baubles all surrounding a huge glowing Christmas tree. In the corner there was even a nativity scene with baby Jesus and very German/Anglo-looking Mary, Joseph, and three wise men. It was quite a lot to take in, actually, especially when I found out that all of this gets imported from Germany to Japan every year(!). Wow, pretty amazing - and pretty delicious!!

After arriving and perusing all the booths, we grabbed ourselves some dinner of delicious herby sausages and potatoes followed by some wonderful mulled wine with baumkuchen. While amazing and wonderful and great it was also quite an expensive dinner, especially the wine because it came in it's own novelty cup which you had to buy to try the wine. Ah well. It was worth it: I left satiated and slightly rosy-cheeked.

We meandered around after that stopping to look at all the booty and I found myself buying nostalgic things like candy canes and froasting-coated gingerbread cookies. I also bought a box of German loose leaf rose tea which also cost me dearly but I'm sure will be well worth it as I love rose tea which is next to non-existent in Japan, unfortunately. I will ration it, to be sure. And then after a last glance off we went to finish our night elsewhere.

It was a cute little place to visit and the Umeda Sky Building seems to like doing all sorts of cultural events - I went to a Mexican Fiesta there earlier this year - but don't expect to be there that long. It is rather small and you will wind up mostly just eating, drinking, and buying things that you don't need. However, for those that miss a taste of home (if home is a bit European, as mine was since my mother was from Prague) this is definitely a cute place to visit.

For those interested it's at the Umeda Sky Building 12pm–9pm (Mon-Thu) 12am–10pm (Fri-Sun and holidays) until December 25th. Enjoy and remember to bring a coat if you go at night - it's getting colder!!