Easter In Japan?
 

Now I know Japan is mainly a buddist/shinto-ist country, but I was wondering (since you guys have christmas) if you celebrate Easter too?

For most people in England, the best way to celebrate Easter is to exchange gifts of chocolate eggs (or the "Easter Bunny" will "deliver" them while you sleep) because the egg symbolises new life and also represents the boulder that Jesus moved out of the way once he came back to life.

These chocolate eggs are usually hollow, and usually contain sweets (candy), more chocolate or even small toys inside.



Also, If you're not in Japan, how is Easter (if at all) celebrated in your country?

Happy Easter Everyone!

I don't really celebrate Easter so I can't really tell you. Some people like to give chocolate to their friends and/or love. Usually people give a chocolate egg. I don't know more about how it is celebrated here... sorry!

I'm in Austria right now and will be this easter but in my country (Albania, I hope anybody knows it), we colour red eggs and knock with each other, it's usually a family thing and who wins has the luck. I don't know the reason behind this because I'm not really religious (atheist), but we still do it just for fun... people are orthodox though, there is no catholic in my country... very rare to meet one.

In America, "easter egg hunts" are among the main activities that go on during Easter.

They are usually organized by adults for smaller children. All the adults scatter plastic eggs around (they have candy and other prizes and stuff inside of them) All the children get together, (usually in a large open area, like a churchyard or something) and they have to find the eggs.

Is this in other countries? Or just America? I've never heard of it happening in other countries. But Easter here also has the same religious meaning.

Some families here do the egg hunt but they hide chocolate eggs like i mentioned before - I've never seen plastic ones? Sometimes they hide cream eggs too!

Same here, but I still don't understand where the eggs and the bunny fits in. Who even came up with that?

"Jesus is coming, HIDE THE EGGS!" -Carlos Mencia

I don't celebrate Easter, you think I might do a little something because bunnies are my favorite animal but I don't at all. However, I do take advantage of the candy sales that happen the day after.
Mmmm, Dove chocolate bunnies on sale..

they hide eggs in the bushes,they put chocolate candy or toys iside, that all i remenber,
happy easter

I got this from wikipedia

'For Orthodox Christians, the Easter egg is much more than a celebration of the ending of the fast, it is a declaration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Traditionally, Orthodox Easter eggs are dyed red to represent the blood of Christ, shed on the Cross, and the hard shell of the egg symbolized the sealed Tomb of Christ—the cracking of which symbolized his resurrection from the dead.'

I guess that is why we use real eggs. I never won lol Also, people go down a table in the church... for luck I think

Very different to America though.

My family (mexican) Put confetti in eggs. Some of them have money and if you got confettu crack it in someones head ^_^

Easter in Japan is totally nonexistent.
For some reason, it hasn`t been commercialized here. Or maybe it`s just outweighed by all the other stuff happening this time of year - sakura, new school year, etc.

I don`t even know when Easter is.

Do we? It's true a lot of us celebrate it in a very commercial way, especially among lovers. But Christmas never was a holiday here. It's a regular working day unless it happens to fall on a weekend.

It may not be a national holiday - but ask any child what Christmas is, and I think you`d have quite a lot of difficulty finding one who didn`t answer with something connected to Santa, presents, or tree.

Easter, on the other hand... And I think it would be equally as hard to find a child who`d ever heard of it.

Easter, in my opinion, has just as much commercialization potential as, say, Valentine`s Day. Chocolate eggs, gift baskets to children, events, etc!

I'm not asking a child about this because I know all that. I myself was a Japanese child until just a few years ago! Christmas was fun. Back then I just never knew it was a national holiday in many other countries. ;)

Missing the pre-subway era in Nagoya... The streetcars, the little 3-wheeled automobiles and not a single skyscraper. An okonomiyaki only cost 20-30 yen! 10 yen got you a big icecream bar. Only a few years ago.... :p

aah, the good old days. osaka had two baseball teams with a stadium in the city center. we had a different comedian as mayor and takoyaki stands could be found in every corner. shinsuke 島田伸助 was still part of a combo and there was no knight scoop. (ok, so the last two once are a little bit before my time)

just for the record, i like knight scoop

oh, easter...no there is not too much easter around here.

Agreed. I couldn't even tell a toaster and Easter apart.

What I find funny, though, is the fact that a lot of "Westerners" expect us to celebrate their holidays when they celebrate none of ours.

A few tens of years ago. :P

The 20~30 yen okonomiyaki though... I know a place in 南区 that still only charges that much. :D
At least I got here before Nagoya station towers were finished though. Watched the opening on TV and was very glad I wasn`t actually present, as it looked like people were crushing each other on their way in.

Back to the topic (sort of) though - how long has Christmas been a fairly well known thing?

I think that is partially because most of Europe, and a fair chunk of the rest of the world does celebrate the Christian holidays. For a lot of people, it`s very hard to imagine somewhere not being all that influenced by Christianity - even if it`s not Christian.

I had to do some research to answer because Christmas was already pretty much the way it is now in Japan when I was a kid in the 60's. :o

In the 16th century, the first recorded Mass was held. There must not have been anything commercial about Christmas back then. Still it involved less than 1% of the Japanese population that were Christian.

As you know Christianity was banned during the Edo period. It wasn't before 1900 when the general public came to know about Christmas. Meidi-ya started selling Christmas cakes in Tokyo in 1900 and from that moment on, we got hooked on the new "custom", as commercial and invented as they were. In 1925, the government issued the Christmas postage stamps and donated part of their sales to charity. People started holding parties where they drank champaign, ate cakes, exchanged presents, etc.

So, apart from Christmas celebrated by real Christians in Japan, which seems to have a 500-year history, the history of Christmas celebrated in highly commecial ways by the general public looks to have a roughly 100-year history.


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Eastsr
 

as anything else there are many interpretation of why you do celebrate and how you celebrate an special holyday. Easter is a Christian celebration of Jesus. having said that, your eggs represent life or reproduction. it's from them where chickens are born. the bunnies represent life or reproduction. Easter is celebrated on Spring which is the mating season or reproduction.
the candy, chocolates,dying or coloring eggs, egg hunting is commercialized to gaing profit, but it is fun!!!! for the family, specieli for those whom don't want nothing to do with Christ. even on Christ-mas.:vsign:

And underneath the stadium, behind Namba station, close to the Hard Rock cafe, was one of the 2 best used manga shops in the whole city. The place was a mini-mall of at least 8 or 10 small used manga dealers all sharing 1 very large space, and each had their own little subsection. They often had complete sets of used manga series on sale for a great price. It was always my first stop after arriving in Namba station.

I was sad to hear that the stadium was torn down, since that means the manga shop is gone too. I wonder if they all closed down or if some or all of them moved to new locations?

Thanks for that bit of research. I was thinking it was something that had perhaps started after the war.

Was イヴ even the same back in the 60s? :D Mother-in-law was saying it wasn`t that way until the bubble, so she "missed out" on the potential romantic possibilities.

Your mother-in-law is right and I like her sense of humor! That indecent "new custom" for the Eve is entirely the relics of the bubble period. Before the bubble, Christmas had been a more family-oriented event. It was a three-generation event for many of us. It's now a two-person one.

I wasn't expecting anything, sorry if that came across as rude. I really just wanted to know how far chocolate eggs went around the world, nothing to do with the religious or holiday bit..

Don't worry, SHADOW. I know you too well to not know you meant no harm.
I was only being sarcastic.

I`m guessing you had quite a nice childhood to be celebrating it back in the 60s - according to my husband, they never even mentioned Christmas where he was growing up (during the 80s). He only knew of the event from KFC commercials. Apparently he asked his parents if they were going to have a tree with presents under it one year, and they told him to go out and climb the mountain behind the house and he could see as many trees as he wanted and pick up anything he found underneath of them - for free.
Another year he pestered his dad who brought him home a fish with a ribbon tied around it. :D

I'm a little bit surprised to hear this. It may be a regional thing, then.

We had a Christmas tree for as long as I can remember. Kids in my neighborhood got to go to a few Christmas parties every year because the cram school and the Abacus school held theirs a few days before Christmas so that we could still party at home on the 24th. One of my uncles, who lived near us, was a Yamazaki dealer and on every Christmas Eve, he had his garage packed with hundreds of boxes with Christmas cakes in them for his customers to come and pick up. By age 8 or 9, I was already hooked on the fake non-alcohol champaign by Fujiya.

That was Christamas in the 60's in Nagoya. I graduated from elementary in '71.

No matter what you've heard, Easter derives from Pagan tradition. The rabbit symbolizes fertility, and spring is a time of new life.

It has nothing to do with Christianity.

Thought I'd just...put that in. >_>