Fast Food Christmas deals 2013 (product information)

Image courtesy of Domino's Pizza, Japan.

When you think Christmas dinner, you think of chain pizza places, right? Well, you would if you were in Japan - at least you would as a second thought after you found out that your local KFC no longer had any open slots for Christmas dinner meal reservations. They're the second line of defense in a country which doesn't give anyone the day off for holiday meal preparation. You'd look to fast food, too, if you had to try and pull a "special" meal together after a long day on the job. Domino's is offering the tasty-looking specimen above. It looks big and juicy, doesn't it? Well, if you view it in context, it's not so much a half "chicken" as a "half pigeon".

To understand just how tiny this is, you have to bear in mind that a "large" pizza in Japan is no bigger than and sometimes slightly smaller than a "medium" in the U.S. That is, it was about 12" (25 cm.) in diameter. You can get a Christmas dinner set including this half Cornish game hen with a salad, Coke, and a tiny cake for 4,900 ($47) or 5,900 yen ($57).

Pizza Hut is not to be left our. If you reserve the day before you want the order received, and between Dec. 21 and Dec. 25, and you spend at least 3,000 yen ($29) on your pizza, potatoes, and whatever else is in your fast food meal, you can get the above cake as a "present". The cake is 12 cm. (4.8 in.), so you've getting an itty bitty little thing, but at least it's free!

I checked out the last, and most popular, of the triumvarate of pizza chains in Japan. That would be Pizza-la, and, apparently, they want nothing to do with this Christmas nonsense and don't appear to be making any special offers. I guess they do well enough with their regular Japan-style offerings as well as things like their New Zealand pizza (cheddar cheese, cheddar sauce, chicken, mayonnaise, thick-cut bacon, onion, tomato, and parsley).

Of course, the "grandaddy" Christmas deal in Japan is KFC. They are offering their standard Christmas deal for 3,980 yen/$38 (pictured above) and it includes a medium-size commemorative plate. Note that this plate design, is very similar to the 2010 design on the one my husband and I got during our one and only KFC holiday celebration. It's a little different (people around a tree instead of around a merry-go-round), but similar enough that I confused them on first glance.

Happy Christmas Eve to my readers. This is actually my favorite day as the moment of anticipation is always better than the moment of any sort of reveal. I hope you all have a good one!

Variety Friday: Japanese KFC Christmas

The barrel was quite huge, about the volume of a 5 gallon bucket. 

Despite living in Japan for over 20 years, my husband and I have never taken part in the traditional fried chicken and Christmas cake rituals that have somehow become a part of the Japanese Christmas tradition. I'm not certain of how this tradition began, but I would be surprised if it weren't the devil spawn of the KFC marketing department. They are the kings of this ritual, though a wide variety of other outlets, including convenience stores and other fast food places, have jumped on the fried chicken bandwagon around this time of year.

The reservation schedule posted at our local KFC. The top shows the menu options for Christmas packs/barrels. The yellow tags indicate limited availability of chicken during those hours and the orange tags are hours in which no original recipe chicken will be on offer. You can see that 3:00 pm - 9:00 pm on the 24th is the busiest. (Click this to see a bigger version.)

While it may seem that having KFC for Christmas is just a simple matter of strolling on over to the local greasy chicken outlet and picking up a bucket, it's a bit more complicated than that because of the popularity of getting chicken during "the 3 days of Christmas" in Japan. At least in Tokyo, you have to make an effort to sign up early in order to pick your grub up around dinner time on the 23rd, 24th or 25th. If you don't, you risk getting shut out entirely as they can run out of original recipe chicken. Also, there can be huge mobs of people on the 25th and it's hard to get what you want by mere luck.

My husband and I signed up a few weeks before the date, but even then we were too late to hit any of the sweet spots for dinner on Christmas Eve or Day. We had to settle for the 23rd, which happens to be a national holiday (the Emperor's birthday) in Japan. You choose a time to pick up your chicken at 10-minute intervals. Ours was between 6:30-6:40. If you're late, you still get your chicken, but it will have sat around for awhile. Since you have to pay when you make your reservation, they don't care if you show up or not.

 The bucket contents unpacked.

There are a few different options, but we opted for the "party barrel A" for 3,880 yen ($47) because you get a commemorative plate in addition to a "Christmas salad", Christmas cake, and 8 pieces of original recipe chicken. The other options include the "party barrel B" (4 pieces of chicken, 6 tenders, a salad, a cake and the plate for the same price as "A"), and "Christmas Packs" which include only various types of chicken (tenders, nuggets, and pieces), no salad, no cake, and no plate. My husband wanted to get the plate as part of the deal as a memento of our first "Japanese-style" Christmas meal, but we also figured that this would save us having to arrange for a separate cake.

The whole lot served up, save the cake. That's our rice. It doesn't come with your barrel.

Except for the cake, nothing much was going to be a surprise. Everyone knows what original recipe KFC tastes like. The "Christmas salad" was nothing more than a smallish bit of salad with a Caesar salad kit on the side. What was worse was that the salad was mostly iceberg lettuce. Again, this was no great shock, but it would have been nice if they had done a little better by those buying expensive Christmas barrels. The salad kit had dressing, croutons, bacon bits, Parmesan cheese, and 4 plastic forks. The salad portion was barely adequate for 2. If you had 4 people, it would have been obscenely tiny.

The cake was very soft and I had a little trouble getting it out of the package without denting up the soft chocolate topping. When my husband smelled it, he said it was very reminiscent of something and asked me what I thought. My first thought was chocolate pudding, and that was his thought as well. The cake looks like your usual Japanese Christmas cake in that it has little flecks of real gold in the center to add a touch of elegance.

The cake was largely whipped cream based. The super soft outer layer was slightly bittersweet and where most of the flavor lay. The texture was pretty nice, but I would have liked a bit more heft both in terms of the flavor and density of the cake. The cake itself nearly vanished in a melty cloud of cream. It wasn't bad, but wasn't nearly as good as the cake I was given last year, not by a long shot. On the bright side, the cake was about 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter and provided 4 large pieces or 8 small ones. My husband and I each had 1/8, and that weighed in at a mere 90 calories per serving.

This was an interesting experience, but mainly for going through the process of reserving it, picking it up, and seeing what the surprises might be. All in all though, it wasn't a very good meal, but I'm not a fan of fast food in general and KFC in particular. I ate one piece of the chicken only and the rest my husband will have to slowly eat by himself. If you love KFC and want a plate as a souvenir to remember your time in Japan by, this may be worthwhile, but I wouldn't do this again.

I have to ponder why this is so popular in Japan despite being a decidedly so-so experience on the food front. It's certainly not cheap. In fact, you could probably buy all of the components separately and end up with more money left in your pocket. The plate isn't really even a free bonus and you could definitely get a nicer cake, even from a convenience store. I think that this ultimately is like a lot of Western traditions in that we don't do them because they are good but simply because they are familiar and following this custom puts one in the proper spirit for  the holiday. Many Japanese people eat bad fried chicken for Christmas for the same reason that we still give fruitcakes. It's just what is done by everyone and we try not to think too deeply about why we do it.

Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

Japanese Christmas Cake

Earlier this week, I was remarking to my husband that we have lived in Japan for 20 years, and never once purchased a Christmas cake. For those who are not aware of what it is, the Japanese have carved out their own unique way of celebrating the holiday in a secular manner which involves the purchasing of a birthday-cake-style cake and eating it on Christmas Eve or Day. The history of this cake is not clearly known, but the idea seems to have come from a combination of buche de noel cakes from France with their whipped cream decorations and sponge cake and the British Christmas cake shape and style.

Of course, the cakes also have been modified to suit Japanese people's tastes. In general, that includes the use of whipped cream frosting and fresh strawberries. There are some beautiful pictures of the most common type of Christmas cake on the Shibuya 246 site. There are a vast number of cake types though, and you can get nearly any type you like.

Getting back to my Christmas cake, my husband said that he'd like to, "just once", go the KFC chicken route for Christmas (fried chicken is the other half of the traditional Japanese Christmas custom) and I said we should try a cake as well. Fortunately for me, my little wish came true without my having to ponder whether I'd reached an alarming degree of cultural assimilation by diving in and buying a Christmas cake. One of my students gave me a beautiful chocolate cake last night as a gift.


The cake is quite small (but perfect for 4 satisfying, but not diet-killing, servings) and I'm sure cost an insane amount of money. It's got 6 layers. From top to bottom, it is: bittersweet chocolate syrup, chocolate mousse, dark chocolate sponge cake, whipped cream, crunchy chocolate ganache (possibly mixed with corn flakes?), light chocolate sponge cake. This was fantastic. Most of the cake you get in Japan is fatty, but not sweet enough to enhance the chocolate flavor (or uses too little chocolate). This one had high quality ingredients and great flavor. It was also very light. The mix of textures and flavors was impressive.

Wherever you are, I hope you're having a great holiday and enjoying whatever Christmas goodies your culture has to offer. Thank you for reading!