Merry Christmas from Japan

This is a message that Yoshi sent me from Japan and I want to share it with you:

Hey alessandro, how are you ? everything is fine here. my father, he's also fine.
I saw your blog. that's cool, man ! black and white is much cooler than color picture.

I'm getting used to Japanese culture again, but it's still strange for me a little bit.

Japan, we traded with many countries such as Portugal, Spain and England before
,but after1600, we decided to trade with only Holland and China at small artificial island "1.3ha"! in Nagasaki.

we built this Island only for trade...probably we were afraid of foreigner..
I also don't know why we traded with only Holland and China...maybe we just wanna smoke...

we continued this trade from 1600 to 1850 ! about 250 years ! many Japanese, we never met foreigner in their life.
It was enough time to make original culture... no shake hands...no look at eyes...and so on, and so on..

after 1800, many countries, they wanted us to open Japan, but we didn't want it.
"they wanted, but we didn't want..."that sounds cool, doesn't it !? we wanted to stay away from them. we still wanted to be cool !

,but 4 American big warship came to Japan in 1853 finally. we got shock a lot, and then we decided to open Japan reluctantly...no chance


even after this, we could keep our own culture easily because Japan is island and far away from Europe.
, but in 1945, we lost war, and manything was changed dramatically. now we celebrate Christmas....

In Japan, we celebrate Christmas with couple, and we celebrate new year with family.It's opposite of Europe.
I like new year in Japan, but I don't like Japanese Christmas. we should be cool from Christmas...many Japanese, we are not christian..


anyway,merry Christmas and happy new year !

It's snowing here.
yoshi