Christmas Has Been Coming

Christmas decorations appeared in our area stores on the weekend before Halloween this year. Can you tell what this snowman is made of? It was made out of something left over from Halloween.

Two pumpkins! This snowman was made out of two pumpkins that were painted white. It was outside a cake shop. The sign advertises a cake set for 600 yen. These pictures were taken two weeks ago, so the snowman is probably gone now.

A whole scaffold was built to put these decorations up. Two men were putting up lights under a covered walkway. It leads to a department store from a train station.

The decorations get bigger and brighter every year. Now they are everywhere, too. Our house used to be the only one in our neighborhood decorated with lights. About five years ago, we were a little late putting them out. The neighbors started asking about them. Big Sister came in from school and said her friend's mother was waiting for our lights.

A girl from Little Brother's class lives across the street in an apartment building. She told Little Brother that she and her mother like to sit and have tea and look at our lights. We try to put them up at the beginning of December. In recent years, there are several houses in our neighborhood that decorate with lights. They put them up much earlier than we do, but they haven't started to decorate yet this year.