Okay, it’s Christmas Day over there in the states. You really ought to have caught the fever by now, but if by some chance it’s still eluding you, if you still feel like you’re on the outside of Christmas looking in, struggling to recapture an inkling of the way you felt about the day when you were still a kid, here ya go. Dip in any ol’ where and start reading. It’s always worked for me. Happy Christmas.

Japan seems to be big on everything about Christmas but the day itself. Trees and decorations have been up all over the country since October, Santa Claus is a regular fixture in storefronts, and holiday music has been playing non-stop. But December 25 is just another workday here. Businessmen will trudge to the office, stores will open as usual, teachers will teach, schoolkids will doze, trash will be picked up, and lunches will be eaten. Gifts, when they’re exchanged, will be limited to small tokens between lovers, as on Valentines Day. It’s a surreal experience.

I’m heading to Osaka and Kyoto for the next few days, where I’ll visit friends and hopefully catch a little holiday spirit. In the meantime, have yourself a holly, jolly Christmas.

I’m dating myself here, but I remember the very first episode of The Muppet Show.

Clarification: I don’t really remember sitting in the living room of the house in Charleston, S.C., where I grew up, watching the debut of The Muppet Show itself (not the way I recall watching Ultraman as a kid, anyway), but I do remember the very first sketch of the show’s premiere, which was in 1976. Is it possible my memory of the sketch was from a later rebroadcast? Yes, but I’m not interested in quibbling over such details right now, and anyway I’m talking about the sketch, not the date, so relax about the whens and the wherefores already, okay? Thank you.

My point is that I’ve been recently reminded that I remember the Muppet’s first sketch because I can’t get the song that accompanied it out of my head. For two weeks now, I’ve been humming it virtually non-stop – or at least in the rare moments when my brain hasn’t been occupied with endless repeats of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which I’ve been singing with my students at the American Club a half-dozen times each weekday since the middle of November, and which now occupies a neighborhood of my brain’s dimly lit limbic region formerly reserved for “Happy Birthday” and the theme song to One Day at a Time.

While I’m on the subject, let me state for the record that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a really shitty Christmas song. This is a point that’s doubtless been made countless times before me, but having sung it approximately one hundred and twenty times in the last month, I feel I’m in a position to comment critically on this work with some authority. I’m not talking about the melody here; I’ll let others sharpen their knives on that aspect of its many shortcomings. I’m talking about the message it sends. And you know perfectly well what I mean.

Rudolph is despised, ridiculed, and ostracized because he looks different. This condition prevails until a popular authority figure legitimizes him with attention. After which all the other reindeer, who formerly couldn’t stand the sight of him, suddenly “love” him and everything is understood to be just peachy. Does this strike anyone else as a pitch-perfect description of junior high school? There’s no way this is an exemplary life lesson for children we don’t wish to grow up to be complete social pariahs. But you ask people to name their favorite Christmas carols (never mind that this is about as far from a real carol as Christmas music gets), and “Rudolph” almost always lands at or near the top. Christmas spirit? Please. Between messages like this and the standard holiday season sanctimony, I’ll take a good old-fashioned pagan celebration of the winter solstice any year, thanks very much.

Back to the Muppets. The reason I’ve been thinking about that first episode, as I said, was because of the song featured in the first sketch, which, unlike “Rudolph” and the theme song from One Day at a Time, I’ve recently realized is trapped inside my head because it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. And also because it appears on the new Cake CD B-Sides and Rarities, where it receives a splendid update. If you don’t know the song I’m talking about yet (or the sketch), here are a couple of clues: it was originally written by Piero Umiliani, but made immortal by Jim Henson and, now, a droller-than-thou indie rock band from Sacramento.

That’s right, I’m talking about “Mahna Mahna.” No fat elves, no flying deer, no miracle babies, no wise men or merry gentlemen, no figgy pudding or wassail, no supernatural astronomical events, no jingling bells or Christmas trees, absolutely no virgins, seraphim or otherworldly agents of any kind. In other words, my kind of Christmas carol.

[audio http://www.manandultraman.com/audio/mahnamahna.mp3]

There’s a lot about this time of year that makes me long for home and friends, but one of the things I look forward to most about each holiday season is something I can enjoy from my chair here in Japan this year: The New York Times Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas issue, which just landed on Sunday.

“For the seventh consecutive December, the magazine looks back on the passing year through a special lens: ideas. Editors and writers trawl the oceans of ingenuity, hoping to snag in our nets the many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months. Then we lay them out on the dock, flipping and flopping and gasping for air, and toss back all but those that are fresh enough for our particular cut of intellectual sushi. For better or worse, these are 70 of the ideas that helped make 2007 what it was. Enjoy.”

They even drop in a sushi reference for me. It’s nice to know I’m being thought of.

I’m afraid I must report that the Christmas tidings at 2-91-8 Nittazuka are not all happy. My camera is in critical condition, a casualty, it would seem, of shrimp and grits. Whether this is a permanent status or one that medical science and the patient application of time and moistened Q-Tips can reverse remains to be seen. But the hard fact is that, at the moment, my camera is kaput. This is a direct result of it briefly sharing the interior space of a plastic shopping bag with the contents of a not entirely airtight Tupperware container of shrimp sauce, made less airtight by a bumpy five-minute ride in a bicycle basket atop a large bowl of grits*. The question of what my camera was doing inside a plastic bag with a Tupperware container of shrimp sauce in a bicycle basket is, while perhaps worth considering in a future examination of the events leading to the incident, otherwise immaterial to the issue at hand. Suffice to say that this American Southerner wished to treat the attendees of a Japanese Christmas potluck to a taste of his homeland and culinary heritage. This, I successfully did, to considerable acclaim, in fact. That the dish was flavored with essence of camera seemed to diminish its popularity not at all. Unfortunately, I was unable to document said acclaim for reasons which must be all too obvious. Despite this, the evening was not a total wash. Christmas cheer was generously indulged in, turkey (!) was eaten, naughty Japanese words were learned, e-mail addresses were exchanged, and Japan-related travel advice flowed like mulled wine, of which there was lots. There was also an impressive demonstration of a self-heating, self-contained, disposable saké cup purchased at a convenience store and an interesting solution to the ubiquitous absence of central heating in Japan: the electric heated carpet. I’d have taken a picture, but see above. And to be honest, it wouldn’t have been that exciting a picture anyway.

* My sister Angie is to be held blameless in these events, despite having provided me with the grits in question.

My second visit to Kyoto was, I’m pleased to report, a smashing success. I held onto my wallet, I missed not a single train or bus, I did not injure or overly humiliate myself, I lost no organs to the black market, I caused no international diplomatic incidents, I neither married nor impregnated anyone, I made no grown men cry (although one embittered convenience store clerk may have cursed me), and I broke nothing that I had to pay for. In my wake lies a minimum of trauma, anguish and bereavement. I made no audible jokes at the expense of nearby old persons, I kicked no living animals, I swallowed nearly every item of food I placed in my mouth, and to the woman two tables over whose legs I ogled during the course of 20 minutes in the Gion Starbucks I have already apologized profusely.

Of coasters, matchbooks, lacquered chopsticks, saké cups, tiny vintage photographs of geisha in tranquil repose, matching salt-and-pepper shaker sets, and small pieces of Chionin Temple, I stole only the minimum required by posterity and the grievous demands of the Holiday Season. All but one bathroom break occurred indoors, the initials I carved into a 2,000-year-old cherry tree in Inari-taisha Shrine are, I believe, completely untraceable, and it’s likely that the taxi driver who nearly sent me into oblivion as I jaywalked across Shinbashi-dori believed afterward that I was only pointing at the sky in his direction. I also feel sure the Chawan-zaka gallery owner who wished me to hand over ¥100 after I took a candid photo of him will think twice before wrestling over ¥100 in a ceramic pottery shop again.

At no time did I spit upon another person’s bare skin, none of the Japanese coins I used were obvious forgeries, and if I made one too many rude jokes to that shoe store clerk in Kyoto Station about the size of my feet, c’mon, it was all in good fun, she’ll live.

The “present” I left under the Christmas Tree in Maruyama Park will surely amuse the lucky city employee who finds it, providing he’s seven years old, has a strong stomach, and is easily amused. Contrary to what a certain passenger in car 3 of the Kyoto-Osaka Keihan line thinks, a small, neat pile of toenail clippings is not cause to summon the conductor, for Christ’s sake. It’s not the Spanish Inquisition, you know. Anyway, toenails biodegrade, which is more than I can say for a certain someone’s tits. Also, here’s a memo for all employees of the Osaka Aquarium: if you think everyone who walks through the door somehow knows that flash photography will permanently blind the fish, you have another think coming. Throw a community sushi dinner and call it a fund-raiser, problem solved.

My host’s hair will grow back eventually, her landlord is unlikely to notice the missing ductwork until at least spring, and if she didn’t tell me she was afraid of heights, how could I possibly know not to rock the Ferris wheel cab while we were at the top? Finally, I don’t know what world her neighbors live in, but in the real one, if any part of a newspaper is lying in your driveway, it’s yours. Finders keepers, man.

New Bride at Heian Jengu Shrine Garden

Shakkei and Japanese Tourists at Heian Jengu Shrine Garden

Texting Woman on Teramachi-dori Corner

Yours Truly