{"id":120,"date":"2005-12-25T23:50:36","date_gmt":"2005-12-25T14:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-12-25\/120"},"modified":"2005-12-25T23:50:36","modified_gmt":"2005-12-25T14:50:36","slug":"our-christmas-eve-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-12-25\/120","title":{"rendered":"Our Christmas Eve Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\n

We seem to have started a new family Christmas Eve tradition.....\n\n<\/p>

\n\n\nFirst, we enjoyed the free mini concert that the Kyoto Hotel Okura<\/a>\nputs on in their nicely-decorated lobby each Christmas Eve. We enjoyed<\/span> it\nlast year<\/a> as well, when\nthey had a men's<\/span> choir. This year they featured the Tokyo Horn\nSpieler<\/b> horn quintette.\n\n<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/div>\n\n

\n\nThey started out with a huge alphorn<\/a> (looks like a\n20<\/span>-foot-long tobacco pipe originally used to communicate long distances in\nthe Alps), then moved on to a pair<\/span> of natural horns<\/a> (like\nFrench Horns, without keys or valves -- basically, just an alphorn all\nwound up). Finally, they moved on to the main bulk of the thirty-minute\nconcert with three French Horns and an alto tuba.\n\n<\/p>

\n\nThey played a lot of standard Christmas favorites, and some horn-friendly\nexcerpts from some Classical music. We all enjoyed<\/span> it, and Anthony even\nclapped of his own volition. He was a<\/span> good, well-behaved boy (about which\nMommy and Daddy were very happy, after having been a bit<\/span> worried about how\nit would turn out).\n\n<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

Before leaving, we took a close-up look at the hotel's outside light\ndisplay (which we've seen many times driving by, and which we saw last year\nas well). It's quite<\/span> nice and \u30d4\u30ab\u30d4\u30ab (“pika-pika”, sparkling\/twinkling).\n\n<\/p>

\n\nAlso before leaving, we picked up an order from one of the hotel restaurant\nthat Fumie had phoned in earlier: a Christmas<\/span> Eve chicken diner.\n\n<\/p>\n\n

\n
\n <\/a>\n \n This<\/b> is the chicken!\n <\/center>\n<\/div>\n\n

I guess that chicken is to a Japanese Christmas Eve somewhat what turkey is\nto an American Thanksgiving. I've always known that it's popular for\ncouples to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, there are KFCs all over\nJapan) on Christmas Eve, but I'd not known that it was deeper than that.\n(I'd always thought that the KFC thing was sort of like a KFC<\/span>\/Japanese\nversion of an American florist pushing “Secretary's Day”). But Fumie, for\nexample, has strong memories of Mom's Christmas Eve chicken dinner, and\nwanted to try the same type of thing here (but having Hotel Okura cook it\ninstead of Mom).\n\n<\/p>

\n\nSo, we brought home a cooked whole chicken, potatoes au gratin, and two\njelled loaf-related things of indeterminable content. The chicken<\/span> was very\nnicely spiced and, well, just perfect, as were the potatoes. The other<\/span> things were also good, but I don't<\/span> know what they were.\n\n<\/p>

\n\nWe got home and Fumie got everything set up, and we had a dinner<\/span> that\ncapped off an evening that I'm sure will be a tradition<\/span> for years to come.\n\n<\/p>\n
\n

\n
\n<\/a>\n\nReady to eat!\n<\/center>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We seem to have started a new family Christmas Eve tradition..... <\/p>

First, we enjoyed the free mini concert that the Kyoto Hotel Okura puts on in their nicely-decorated lobby each Christmas Eve. We enjoyed it last year as well, when they had a men's choir. This year they featured the Tokyo Horn Spieler<\/b> horn quintette. <\/p>

They started out with a huge alphorn (looks like a 20-foot-long tobacco pipe originally used to communicate long distances in the Alps), then moved on to a pair of natural horns (like French Horns, without keys or valves -- basically, just an [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}