Christmas 2018 cosplay street party in Shibuya has surprising lack of girls in Santa costumes
Christmas is a strange time in Japan: it is celebrated, secularly rather than religiously, and also not in the way you might think. People exchanging gifts? Yes, a bit. Special food? Yes, kind of. But the dishes are largely KFC and strawberry cake. Even the day itself is usually marked on Christmas Eve by couples as a romantic occasion (meaning Christmas is potentially less a time for families than for, well, making families!).
That aside, the recent craze for gathering in cosplay costumes on the streets of Shibuya at Halloween and New Year’s Eve has also extended to the Christmas season, as we have previously reported.
We couldn’t head to the streets to check out the mayhem ourselves, being too busy overseeing lots of new Japanese adult toys coming into the digital shelves of Kanojo Toys, but fortunately the hardworking and reliable folks of KAI-YOU put up this report for us to share.
This year, Christmas Eve also fell on a public holiday, so everywhere was packed. But not Shibuya, it seems. Perhaps people were scared off by the Halloween “riot” a few weeks ago that saw a truck turned over and prosecutions. In fact, one major Christmas party event at the nightclub TK Shibuya had to be cancelled due to poor advance ticket sales.
The intrepid KAI-YOU team reckons this year had a particular dearth of the young girls in Santa cosplay who have come to define the event, but there were some people generously offering free hugs (sadly no free oppai). That said, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. As the photos indicate, there were still a fair few cuties braving the December chill in skimpy outfits and who seemed happy to pose for the cameras.
This fine young lady is the 23-year-old Sakura Himemitsu, a gravure idol — proving that you do indeed need to mingle with the crowds on the streets of Tokyo if you want to meet models. An encounter with her is certainly on our Christmas wish list for next year!
