On December 21st, our Folklore teacher introduced some of his friends (one being the elementary school teacher of one we had been allowed to visit a few weeks before), and introduced the class to "Okazari", and how to make them. Okazari are good luck and protection charms created from straw, and are hung on doors, rooms and in the front of buildings for the new year. Nowadays they are used more often for tradition than out of actual belief, but the process of learning how to make the interesting twist and knot was quite entertaining.
On December 23rd, I traveled with some friends to the Imperial Palace, located in the middle of Tokyo. Although the grounds are difficult to visit beyond the castle moat, they were opened on this day for the emperor's birthday ceremony. The palace grounds, buildings and gardens were extremely well-kept, as expected, and also housed quite a few buildings from as far back as the 1600's (some renovated, some not). Emperor Akihito's speech itself was difficult to witness due to the immense crowds, but we managed to travel far enough to hear him clearly... of course, since our Japanese was intermediate at best, it was impossible to understand without a translator (which our Japanese friends were more than happy to help us with).
On December 25th, I visited Shinjuku's Illumination event with some Aikido club members. Many major towns in Japan had the "Illumination" ongoing through December, with many of their terraces lit up to the brim with bright holiday lighting. Although we weren't able to see the entire terrace, one glance at some of the patterns and designs begs the question of how much effort had gone into each of these designs.
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