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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KFC- It’s What for Dinner

KFC- It’s What for Dinner

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I heard this the other day and thought it was really funny:

Christmas isn’t a national holiday in Japan but many Japanese celebrate the 25th with a special meal: fried chicken – specifically, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Colonel Sander’s chicken is considered a Christmas tradition there. The fast-food chain is so popular long lines form outside Japanese stores.

You can listen to the whole piece at the link- apparently KFC dinners are so popular in Japan that they take reservations for months ahead of time.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    kid bitzer

    cripes. the foreignness of foreigners.

    next you’ll be telling me that jerry lewis is considered an artistic genius–in france!

  3. 3.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Japanese night of fine dining and entertainment — A little greasy fried chicken at an all night Elvis Karaoke. Different boats I reckon.

  6. 6.

    jharp

    My very good friend Chinese friend in Hong Kong who dines in some of the finest restaurants on earth frequently eats at the KFC’s in Hong Kong.

    This is a guy who almost daily spends $200 on a bottle of wine, eats kobe beef, and the best sushi in Hong Kong among other delicacies.

    And boy oh boy does he share. He treats his guests like Kings. Opus, Dominus, Sliver Oak, yum.

  10. 10.

    jharp

    ajr22

    “When i was in Beijing I saw tons of KFC’s.”

    Same thing in Hong Kong.

    And the Chinese prefer the wings. They like the meat next to the bones or bony meat as they once told me.

    Also the fish head is the best part of the fish. It’s a richer darker more muscled meat.

    And it’s all true. A great example is pulled pork or country ribs.

    I have since given up chicken breasts and consider it one of the worst parts of a chicken

    We also eat snake soup thanks to my friend. Delicious.

  12. 12.

    Corner Stone

    @jharp:

    I have since given up chicken breasts and consider it one of the worst parts of a chicken

    Nah dog. Take the breast, drench it in hot sauce, grabey and then sop up with a Popeye’s bizcuit.
    Manna from Heaven.

  13. 13.

    Mark

    When I was in Japan in 2007, there was a 90-minute line at Krispy Kreme. There were police directing traffic. Whereas you or I might purchase 2 or 3 or perhaps even a dozen donuts, Japanese people buy a gross when they go.

  15. 15.

    AhabTRuler

    Japanese people buy a gross when they go.

    Say it with me now kids: that’s gross. Seriously. I love Krispy Kreme (especially the Bold coffee), but that just makes me want to vomit.

  16. 16.

    tootiredoftheright

    Turkeys aren’t sold in Japan. Also the KFC, McDonald’s local burger chains actually are considered to have good food even by visiting Americans due to the fact that fresh food is used and there are local variations. Shrimp burgers, terakayki burgers for example.

    http://www.kfc.co.jp/menu/index.html#chicken

    Pizza Hut in Japan is quite popular and they have their own family of mascots. Cheese-kun and his family.

    http://www.pizzahut.jp/menu/pizza.php seafood pizzas! Crab Pizzas!

    http://www.pizzahut.jp/menu/pasta.php pastas!

    http://www.pizzahut.jp/menu/side.php baked potato.

    Damn it all! The US pizza hut needs these items they look delicious!

  17. 17.

    IndyLib

    When we lived in our Japanese house in Yolosuka they had Dominos Pizza delivery, with one option for non-fish topped pizza – pepperoni. Weird.
    Don’t remember any KFC’s when we were there, but American fast food places and stores were pretty widespread. We lived right around the corner from a Circle K, there were at least 5 7-11’s in the immediate area, there were Denny’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and a Red Lobster (that was just wrong).
    The weirdest thing was that the clothing mannequins in the mall that looked caucasian and not Asian.

  19. 19.

    preston

    @tootiredoftheright:

    I wouldn’t set foot in a KFC in America but I swear that it’s amazing in Northern Ireland and my friend in Trinidad loves it too.

    Hell, if Whataburger opened in Los Angeles I’d totally celebrate Christmas there.

  20. 20.

    tootiredoftheright

    7-11 in Japan is bascially like a walmart. Video games, dvds, fireworks.

    As for the clothing mannequins did you ever wonder why in anime there are very Japanese people that look like Japanese? 99.999 of the series Japanese people look like Americans or other caucasians. Only one series I can recall had Japanese people looking like Japanese people with only two or three characters having non human hair colors and one or two that didn’t look Asian in the face. Even reviewers of the series commented on this fact.

  21. 21.

    Matthew B.

    The Shinjuku branch of Krispy Kreme gets long lines, but at branches out in the suburbs (e.g., Koshigaya Laketown) you can zip in and out. I’ve never seen anyone buying much over a dozen.

  22. 22.

    tootiredoftheright

    @preston:

    Ah trinadad years ago on a cruise some of my relatives had heard that Burger King had gone bankrupt on some of the carib islands yet KFC was doing gangbusters since for obvious reasons chickens were locally raised yet no room for beef. So the island inhabitants hadn’t gotten a taste for beef. Just goes to show you need to do some research before opening up a branch in a location especially if said location has different food customs.

  24. 24.

    Michael D.

    @Mark:

    When I was in Japan in 2007, there was a 90-minute line at Krispy Kreme. There were police directing traffic. Whereas you or I might purchase 2 or 3 or perhaps even a dozen donuts, Japanese people buy a gross when they go.

    We’re killing Americans with this crap. May as well kill the rest of the world, too.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Comrade Mary:

    Someone needs to introduce them to Popeye’s.

    But who wants Catholic chicken?

    [Seriously. A former coworker- not a native English speaker- parsed the spelling as “Pope yes” rather than “Pop eyes”, which we all thought was hilarious. We’ve always called it the Catholic chicken place ever since.]

  30. 30.

    D-Chance.

    When the “international” students return to the local community college off holiday breaks, some will insist on hitting the local What-a-burger before they even reach the dorms to unpack. Fast foods like hamburgers and fried chicken that we take for granted are definitely more appreciated by those who don’t grow up with such easy availability.

  32. 32.

    Robert Sneddon

    Japanese restaurants often have a display of fake plastic food in the window showing items from the menu, usually the “setto” set meal. Somewhere on my hard disk I have a picture of such a display outside a Mickey D’s in Kamakura showing a plastic Big Mac with fries and a drink. And a kids-meal toy.

  33. 33.

    tootiredoftheright

    @IndyLib:

    It’s because well they aren’t able to be easily told from each other if they were drawn to look Japanese. Earrings, hair color, other jewerly clothing can help distingush people in anime and manga as well as not having Asian faces. Even traditional art the asian faces looked very similar to one another and you often weren’t able to tell they were seperate distinct people

    The anime Gasaraki on the other hand did manage to have Japanese people look like Japanese people. For the most part the vast majority of the characters looked like real world people from the areas they were supposed to be said from. It’s out on dvd in the US.

  37. 37.

    Bubblegum Tate

    My friend lived in Japan for a while, and he told me about this phenomenon a while ago. I still find it fascinating. He also told me that in one store out there, they were selling a figurine of Santa nailed to a cross. Apparently, they weren’t joking, just understandably confused. Awesome.

  38. 38.

    Skippy-san

    It is actually a two part tradition-and its not so strange really, KFC and Christmas Cake. You have to remember that the 25th is not a holiday in Japan and Christmas Eve is a sort of Valentines Day event for young lovers. The Emperor’s birthday is the 23rd BTW so that is the day off. I spent 9 years in Japan and loved Christmas over there.

  39. 39.

    Comrade Kevin

    @preston:

    I wouldn’t set foot in a KFC in America but I swear that it’s amazing in Northern Ireland and my friend in Trinidad loves it too.

    I’ve been in the KFC that is down by the front in Bangor, and I don’t see how it was any different from the stuff in the US.

  43. 43.

    tootiredoftheright

    @Skippy-san:

    They do have Valentine’s Day but it’s sort of like a Sadie Hawkins thing where the girls buy the guys chocolate.
    Then a certain day forget which one in March the guys that recieved chocolate have to buy the girls a gift.
    You also have Golden Week which is a week of national holidays.

  44. 44.

    Kryptik

    KFC Christmas is sort of a marketing coup by the management of the company there. They connected the lack of turkey (noted by tootiredoftheright) to Chicken, saying that it was the ‘closest thing to a traditional Christmas dinner’ you could get. Combined with the already established popularity of the franchise, and…well…

    Don’t get me started on the weird things that come up in regards to the Colonel himself.

  45. 45.

    Mark

    @Matthew B.

    It was indeed the Shinjuku location where I saw the huge lines. People were buying 2’x2′ boxes of donuts and some had stacks 2-3 boxes high. I’d guess three big boxes is a gross.

    Incidentally, China was even crazier. There were two-hour lines at Pizza Hut in the mall but you never had to wait for the best Dim Sum around.

  46. 46.

    Nat

    In January ’72 I chanced upon a Kentucky Fried Chicken in a working class neighborhood of London. The kid in front of me in line asked his mom: ‘What’s a Kentucky?’. Mom didn’t have a clue. Changing the name to ‘KFC’ has helped mothers all over the world.

  47. 47.

    Forty2

    Hm… wonder if the Japanese version of KFC gives them explosive diarrhea like the US version does to me within 30 minutes…

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